Help Your Customers Make a Difference by Adding Charitable Donations to Your E-Commerce Store Today’s brands are embracing the move toward social good. And it’s having unexpected benefits to business. Discounts can be problematic for the long term profitability of a business. Givz offers a win-win alternative that’s attractive to customers and e-commerce companies’ bottom lines. Customer donations to charities outperform traditional discounts in terms of increased conversions and customer retention. Every year, in the U.S. alone, e-commerce businesses lose $50 billion of revenue by offering discounts on retail products. But that’s changing. For decades, companies believed that the best way to attract customers, make sales and increase revenue was by offering discounts on products. But consumers are changing, and these days they expect more from the companies they support. Discounts alone aren’t enough to attract customers. That’s why Givz designed a system that enables brands to give shoppers, at the completion of their transaction, the option to donate a portion of their purchase to charity. In short, Givz enables brands to convert discounts into donations. And in doing so, the business improves customer retention. Givz founder, Andrew Forman, shared the company’s story and described the platform’s purpose-driven features on the podcast, Own Your Commerce (check out the episode here). Highlights from the conversation are included below. Charitable trends in e-commerce Andrew sees two huge trends happening in the e-commerce market right now, with Givz sitting at the tip of the intersection and satisfying both trends: Brands want to move away from discounts Consumers crave doing business with brands that engage in purpose-driven activity How Givz helps e-commerce brands Product discounts can be problematic Discounting products can be bad for the long-term profitability of a business — that’s why many companies prefer avoiding them. Perpetually discounting products trains shoppers to expect price reductions. Customers also start to notice patterns in the way a company discounts inventory and if an item they want to buy is full price, they’re more likely to wait until the next discount to make a purchase. Discounts can also complicate the relationship between a company and its customers. For example, when a shopper buys a product at full price and then the next day sees that item discounted, it can leave the person feeling resentful for missing the sale price. And for some consumers, discounts demonstrate a lack of confidence in a product and may even damage customers’ trust in the company. If a product is always discounted, then shoppers might believe the value of the product should always reflect the lower, discounted price—not the full retail value. Roundup donations are awkward Roundup donations are small amounts of money that are generated by rounding-up the cost of a sale — say $14.53, after taxes, for an audio book — to the nearest dollar amount — $15. And then, at the end of the month, the business combines all of the rounded-up funds and donates it to a single charity. The only problem is that these transactions are known for making customers feel irritated or uncomfortable. It’s a small enough amount that shoppers may opt in, but not because they care about the ASPCA or wounded veterans. Oftentimes they’re doing it because they feel pressure to do it, or feel guilty for not just giving 47-cents to charity. In addition, with roundup donations, a company essentially takes the money from their customers and then turns around and writes a check to the charity using their own name, not the names of the shoppers who donated the money. With Givz, the donation is a gift that the brand gives to customers. Givz has seen higher conversions from customers who are given the option to allocate a donation versus receiving a discount. With one client, Givz tried a 50/50 A/B test where half the email list got a 30%-off coupon code, a...