How to meet customer needs in building a sustainable e-commerce brand

Climate change is a growing concern amongst consumers. As they continue to look for ways to shop sustainably, green e-commerce solutions are fast becoming vital to the survival of businesses and, crucially, the planet.

Importantly, though, the onus isn’t just on brands to offer sustainable products, packaging and shipping. Customers are conscious of their own emissions and increasingly open to taking responsibility for their carbon footprint.

At CarbonClick, we believe that carbon offsetting should be a fundamental part of how you operate, wherever you are on your sustainability journey. If your business is just starting out, offsetting is an easy way to start making a real impact that gives you time to focus on the next steps; if you’re already under way, it is a simple way to boost customer engagement and increase your cart conversion.

Why boost your sustainable brand?

Continuing global lockdowns mean that the shopping activity of increasingly climate conscious consumers takes place largely online. As a result, more attention is being drawn to the impact of eCommerce and there is an added urgency for businesses to be seen to be taking action.

To add to this, consumers are more willing than ever to pay more for sustainable products and services, and 80% are likely to switch brands to one similar in price and quality if they support a cause.

Crucially, consumers are willing to act on climate change. The challenge they face is that they don’t feel their actions will be effective, or do not feel armed with the information to make a change.

As an eCommerce business, this makes it an exciting time to take the lead on climate action and a great opportunity to give your store a meaningful point of difference.

Why carbon offsetting should be your starting point

As sustainable eCommerce solutions become more commonplace, it will become significantly easier to implement green solutions end-to-end: from supply chain to point of delivery. Currently, this is a time-consuming and expensive process.

Carbon offsetting, very simply, is a way of balancing out the carbon emitted by a product through supporting projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere. By making carbon offsets something you can easily integrate into your cart, you and your customers can start having an immediate impact on climate change.

We believe this should be a fundamental step in establishing a green eCommerce store, giving you more time to focus on other initiatives while you grow your sustainable brand.

Most importantly, customers engage with it. A recent study by the U.S Department of Energy reproduced Amazon’s interface to test carbon offsetting. They found that 88% of customers chose to offset when it was added by default and 40% still chose to do so when it wasn’t.

Plus, the feedback we’ve received from our eCommerce customers only adds to this. Since installing our plugin, many store owners have reported an increase in sales, and IOT store found that it improved their cart conversion by 14%.

How our solution supports this

Our solution, Climate Friendly Cart, makes carbon offsetting incredibly simple to integrate into your store. Our Green Button appears at your checkout, giving your customers the option to add a carbon offset to their purchase.

As soon as they offset, the customer can track and trace their contribution to the exact projects they have supported and measure the impact they have made and this contributes to your store’s cumulative offset impact.

Every offset your customers make is managed by us and supports local and global Gold Standard projects around the world. By helping your customers take ownership over their carbon footprint, you can take a genuine leadership role in the business led fight against climate change.