# Keep Converting raises $2M to cut checkout abandonment—but the real play is what they won't automate

*New CRO tool bets on human judgment in pricing decisions as e-commerce abandonment hovers near 70 percent industrywide.*

By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC.
Published 2026-09-16.

Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/keep-converting-2026-09-16t09-7
Subject: Keep Converting
Tags: conversion optimization, checkout abandonment, e-commerce testing, pricing strategy, venture capital

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Keep Converting exited stealth this week with **$2 million** in pre-seed funding to tackle conversion rate optimization for e-commerce brands, according to Voice of Alexandria. The startup's timing reflects a stubborn reality: checkout abandonment rates remain near **70 percent** across online retail, and most brands lack internal infrastructure to test their way out of it.

The company builds tooling for merchants to identify and address friction points in the purchase funnel—checkout flows, product page elements, pricing presentation. Where Keep Converting diverges from the current wave of AI-optimized everything: they position human oversight as the decision layer. The software flags problems and proposes tests, but leaves pricing and offer strategy to the merchant.

That matters because pricing is the highest-leverage variable in a physical product business and the hardest to automate safely. Algorithmic pricing works when you're Amazon moving 12 million SKUs. For a brand selling premium drinkware or boutique dog gear, a miscalculated discount can permanently reposition the product or train customers to wait for sales. Keep Converting's model assumes the merchant knows their margin structure and customer psychology better than a black-box model trained on aggregated verticals.

The funding also signals where venture attention is moving in e-commerce infrastructure. After years of pouring capital into acquisition tools—ad tech, influencer platforms, attribution dashboards—investors are backing post-click infrastructure. The thesis: if you're spending **$50** to get someone to a product page, extraction from that traffic becomes the primary profitability lever. A **2 percent** lift in conversion can return more profit than a **10 percent** reduction in CAC when acquisition costs have structural floors.

For a small physical-product brand, the steal isn't the software—it's the testing discipline Keep Converting will run for funded clients. Start with one variable: shipping threshold messaging. Most brands bury free-shipping minimums or present them inconsistently. Test three treatments on your product page: no mention, a static banner, and a dynamic counter showing how much more the customer needs to add. Run the test for **two weeks** or **500 sessions** per variant, whichever comes first. Measure add-to-cart rate, not just conversion, because the real signal is intent change. Use Google Optimize—free—and a **$200** Facebook traffic boost if your organic volume is low. Track the result in a spreadsheet. If the dynamic counter lifts add-to-cart by **8 percent** or more, make it permanent and test the next variable: urgency messaging on inventory.

The discipline scales. One test per month, documented, with a clear decision rule. After six tests, you'll have a repeatable hypothesis structure and a working knowledge of what moves your customer. That's the operational asset Keep Converting is building for funded brands, but the methodology costs you time and **$1,200** in test traffic over six months—not a **$2 million** tool.

The broader pattern: conversion infrastructure is now fundable at the pre-seed stage because the acquisition layer is saturated and expensive. Brands that win in the next 24 months will extract more from the traffic they already bought, not find cheaper traffic. That means disciplined testing, not better guessing.

## The takeaway

Test one checkout variable per month with a decision rule—small brands can run the same CRO discipline funded startups sell.

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## Publisher

**Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339.
Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**.

- Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about
- LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt
- MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp
- Client dashboard: https://dashboard.pops4.com/
- Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands