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Four Ways to Improve Shopping Cart
Abandonment Stats
September
12, 2006
Adapted from a blog entry by Anne Holland,
Marketing Sherpa
I was completely unprepared to hear the
horrible truth. We've interviewed dozens of
top ecommerce marketers over the years for
Sherpa Case Studies, and when we asked them,
'What's your cart abandonment rate?' nearly
all told us 'around 20-30%.'
When we surveyed 1,100 ecommerce marketers
this year, I naively expected the data to
match up. It didn't. It really, really
didn't match at all.
Turns out the average cart abandon rate was
59.8%. (Lesson learned -- never rely on
anecdotal data as your primary source for
important numbers.) This measurement was the
total number of shoppers who actually
purchased divided by far larger number of
those who put something into their cart.
Why do nearly 60% of online shoppers abandon
their carts at some point in the process?
As I've mentioned in a past column,
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29683,
our research indicates the problem may not
be the design of your shopping cart -- in
the distant past consumers couldn't figure
out how to check out or got tangled on the
way. Nowadays, most consumers are very well
trained in the steps of using an online
shopping cart.
Instead, the problem is nearly entirely
marketing related in nature. This should be
good news because that means marketing can
work to fix things without having to overly
involve the technical department or invest
in heaps of new programming.
According to our consumer research as well
as Case Studies, you should be running the
following four tests to see if you can
reduce abandons:
Test #1. Promote return/exchange policies
Try placing a hot linked bit of copy
that reads something like "Returns Are Easy"
in your cart. The place I would most
recommend would be immediately next to the
button shoppers click to confirm the order.
You'll make that nail-biting moment of final
decision a bit easier.
Test #2. Post reassuring security icon(s)
I have to be honest at this point, even
though some security vendors may hate me for
it. Every single time I've asked marketers
if adding a security-related icon to their
site helped conversions, they've said yes.
However, I haven't seen any significant
evidence that one particular icon works
better than another. In fact, I strongly
suspect the thing to test is not so much
which icon but rather how many of them (do
multiple work better than singular or is it
protesting a bit too loudly about safety?)
and the placement of them.
The cleverest test I ever heard of was a
lesser-known merchant who placed the Better
Business Bureau icon on the button that
shoppers clicked to begin the checkout
process. On that particular site, it helped
sales. I'm not saying this would work for
anyone else, just that it’s worth a test!
Test #3. Include privacy and trust
language next to fields asking for personal
data
We've been hammering on this for years,
and it drives me nuts to see how many
merchants still completely ignore it. Yes,
there's data showing it works. Yes, it's
stunningly easy to do … probably about 10
seconds of programming. I have no idea why
this is overlooked -- perhaps it's too easy?
All you do is include a briefly worded
hotlink such as “We Value Your Privacy”
directly next to the form field where
shoppers are asked to enter their email
addresses.
Test #4. Remind them of their abandoned
cart
Some merchants have tested running exit
pops for everyone who abandons a cart …
usually featuring an extra added discount.
However, pops are vastly blocked these days,
so you may as well test one, but don't
expect much.
The next best thing is to send an email to
those abandons -- but don't make it overtly
salesy. Instead, make it appear to be a
routine transactional email. That's not a
lie, because it is after all a transaction
they were in the middle of conducting when
they left your site. You can simply -- and
possibly in text-only - note that the items
are waiting in their cart for them.
Then, a few days later, you can send a
second note alerting them the cart is about
to expire, so you're contacting them for
their convenience so they can check out
before it's too late.
Other merchants have tested a "why didn't
you buy? or "what did we do wrong?" survey
with great success. Partly the information
is useful, but also the appearance of the
survey in emails often by itself serves as a
prod to complete the transaction. Either way
you win.
Whatever tests you decide to run to increase
cart stickiness, do them soon. Holiday
season is a heartbeat away. In the meantime,
see link below for more data from this study
to help improve your site's fourth-quarter
performance.
Comments about this Blog Entry
Sep 12, 2006 - Michael Ellensohn of IJK /
HMT Hannover says:
Nice article with good ideas to push
sales a bit further. But there might as well
be people like me out there: Very often I
just put products into my shopping cart to
see the final prize, including shipping
costs, taxes and so on. Then I quit the
order process before sending it off. E.g.
many airline websites add taxes and other
surcharges to their actual flight prizes
quite late in the order process. No wonder
their abandonment rates are unsatisfactory.
My user experience is suffering just as
well.
Sep 12, 2006 - Mayda Sanchez of
Unlimitedmedia.com says:
An evaluation of shipping rates and
handling fees would be worthwhile also.
Sep 13, 2006 - Dan Obregon of eStara
says:
Great idea to remind customers of their
abandoned cart, but why not offer them an
opportunity to speak immediately with a live
representative over the phone rather than
sending an invitation to a promotion or
e-mail a question? Oftentimes, customers
will abandon a transaction because they
uncomfortable providing financial
information online or they have a question
about a particular item (e.g.. what's the
return policy, are there other colors
available, etc.). At that moment, they may
need assistance from an expert to continue
down the purchase path. E-mail is fine if
the goal is to build a list for future
contact, but if the goal is to close a sale,
you want to speak to that customer right
away before they’re off to a competitor’s
site. However, if you do decide to escalate
to phone a text chat conversation with a
customer, be sure that the time and effort
they invested online doesn't go to waste
when they cross-channels to speak with you.
It's important to maintain the context of
the customer's online session to preserve a
continuity of experience that will reflect
positively on your brand regardless of
whether or not they complete their purchase
online or offline.
Sep 13, 2006 - shoelover of Shoe Stor
says:
It's all about the flat rate
shipping.......
Sep 13, 2006 - Laurie Jones of SMB says:
I can completely relate to this article,
in addition to Cart there is another huge
problem that could make a great case study
for Marketing Sherpa: Checkout Abandonment
Rate. Similar story, similar potential for
huge wins. I am religious reader of Occam's
Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik. He covered
this topic, both Cart and Checkout
Abandonment in detail along with some tips
on how to fix both. Here is a link to that
post: Excellent Analytics Tip #7: The
Adorable Site Abandonment Rate Metric
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/08/excellent-analytics-tip-7-the-adorable-site-abandonment-rate-metric.html
Mar 05, 2007 - Chris Baker of Chris Baker
Freelance Project Management says:
I wonder: now that carts are more likely
to keep you order until later, and there are
many businesses selling high-value or
high-touch goods via carts, are we seeing
customers using the cart to park items that
are of potential interest? For example, is
the cart a good place to park your potential
purchase while you go off and decide “do I
really want it?” / “can I get a better deal
elsewhere?” / “could I get a tie to go with
that?” etc. I know I have begun to do that.
This would have some big effects e.g. on how
to interpret abandonment rates, on how to
recover some of the business left abandoned
in the carts, whether it was good to have a
“save until later” options (as Amazon do,
for example) and on how often to purge old
carts. One telling statistic would be the
proportion of “abandoned” carts that
re-activated themselves. I’m not doing any
cart projects at present, so this is stuck
at just musing – but I wondered whether
anyone on the list had any information or
thoughts?
http://usabilitynotes.typepad.com/usabilitynotes/2007/02/shopping_cart_a.html
For more information on streamlining the
checkout process and displaying shipping
charges on product pages, see:
Streamlined
Checkout™
Streamlined
Shipper™
Contact Sienna Jones
marketing@streamlinedcheckout.com
Digital Beach
Digital
Beach provides advanced Ecommerce and
Internet Marketing services to a wide range
of companies from small merchants to medium
and large corporate clients.
Digital Beach has been delivering Streamlined Checkout™
with the StoreFront™ cart as part of an overall
eCommerce solution to online merchants since
both products appeared on the market some three
years ago. Nearly two years ago, we
decided we liked
the product so much, we bought
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