IDG Contributor Network: Payment options can complicate e-commerce ROI

Under the best of circumstances, figuring out e-commerce ROI is challenging. Say you're running three ad campaigns and sales grow by 8%. Which campaign made the needle move? Did any of them? If you could go back in time and track sales from those identical shoppers during those days, what would they have done had none of those three ads run?

The ROI problem is that shoppers' purchasing activities ebb and flow normally, so their exact impact is considered all but unknowable (even if, for example, you ran a single campaign and sales immediately shot up 70%, you wouldn't be able to say how much was attributable to that campaign).

I was talking last week with the e-commerce chief over at an apparel site called RainbowShops.com. That online maestro, David Cost, vice president of e-commerce, mentioned that, back in September 2015, his team added PayPal as a payment option.

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