Dropped shopping carts

I thought the majority of sites had this already, yet a vast number of sales continue to be lost every day.

With Christmas fast approaching what are you doing to help the customer?

Take surf clothing for instance.  What is there to stop someone looking online for things but going to their local shop and buying there?

I would think with clothes/fashion you have to offer something extra because you can't allow customers to try things on, check sizes/colours etc.

Adi - WebVideo4U.co.uk - Web Video Made Easy
Web">href="http://www.webvideo4u.co.uk/products/web_conferencing.html">Web Conferencing | Live Streaming Video | Video Email | much more..
Work with businesses? Maybe you could benefit from our affiliate scheme.

Hi Guys,

I think I got the wrong end of the stick when answering your question earlier Adi.

I agree with Jonny, seamless intergration is the best way. This being said, there is nothing stopping a shop customer from browsing your shop and then walking next door to buy the same product.

I think generally the majority of shoppers will search to find the best deal they can, be this on or offline. The only way to change this is to build customer loyalty to a level that, even if your price is slightly more, they will buy from you because of ease and/or good experience in the past.

This can only be done over time and particularly in the UK, internet shopping is only in the last two years starting to make a significant rise in shopping preference. I think it also depends on the product being sold.

I personally won't buy clothes online, however I have bought electronics, gadgets, movies, music and a range of other things, so I think it depends on the item as much as the cost and the ease with which the shopper can find and pay for the items.

Just my opinion.

Ian

^{www.englishdelights.com}

^{Traditional English Candy Exports}

Suppliers of the finest English promotional Confectionery

www.englishdelights.com">href="http://www.englishdelights.com">www.englishdelights.com

Importers and Exporters of Durafix Aluminium Welding Products

www.easyweld.co.uk

Did a bit of digging around for some exact stats on this problem. A report by the Boston Consulting Group conducted in April estimates that some 65 percent of online consumers bail out of a transaction and abandon the shopping carts before the final purchase transaction took place. Another study, this time by market analysis firm Datamonitor, estimates that e-businesses lost 3.2 billion dollars in 1999 due to poor customer service. Of the 237 million online transactions attempted in 1998, only 80 million or 20 percent were completed. The study also shows that for every complete online transaction, nearly four times as many are abandoned. If this trend continues, Datamonitor forecasts a cumulative loss of more than $173 billion in potentially salvageable sales over the next five years. Some serious figures here and a problem that sure needs looking into.
------------------------

Adi - WebVideo4U.co.uk - Web Video Made Easy
Web">href="http://www.webvideo4u.co.uk/products/web_conferencing.html">Web Conferencing | Live Streaming Video | Video Email | much more..
Work with businesses? Maybe you could benefit from our affiliate scheme.

I see what you mean. Very good point and intersting subject. Through the fantastic "user-tracking" module our web guy has installed on our OS Commerce site, we can watch peoples exact movements click by click as they navigate though our site. Fascinating stuff (I am geniunely addicted and have it open in a window constantly!) I know for a fact we get a certain percentage of visitors who have no intention of shopping yet load their cart up with thousands of pounds worth of premium surfboards!! This doesn't help the statistics I'm sure. I think your point regarding people online browsing for a product then purchasing in a store really only applies to a minority of categories. In general, I think people shop around in bricks and mortar establishements, find the product they like, touch it feel it, play with it. Then they go online to find the best price and order it. Ways to reduce dropped carts that I can think of: - Offer a lower price on your good that high street shops (if you are an online business you should have much lower overheads and be able to do this). Or value add. - Offer a larger range, or hard-to-get products not found on the high street - Simplify the shopping process - this is KEY. Make evey step as simple as possible from choosng the product, registering, paying and delivering. Nothing worse than a time consuming, overly complex website. People just give up. - Have a telephone number prominently displayed to take orders over the phone or in case someeone needs help (I need to do this better myself) - Make your site as secure as possble and tell people about it. Give them confidence. - Offer next day delivery with reasonable delivery costs. - Prompt replies to pre-sale queries over email - Offer a customer-friendly, easy to understand and "do-able" returns programme. - As I said before - full integration with your payment side of the site. - It goes without saying that you offer a 1st cass customer experince in all elements of your business. Thsi counts for any business and not just e-commerce though. That's a few for now - it's a really interesting subject actaully an I'll try and think of a few more areas I think are important.
------------------------

I often 'pull out' of a transaction if an unexpectedly high delivery charge is levied or they haven't quoted VAT on their prices and suddenly lump this on at the end - this inevitebly will result in me going elsewhere for a better deal.
------------------------

I think there are three categories here:

1)Like kayemdesign says, extras may be added at checkout that weren't shown elsewhere and punters are put off.

2) Many are not 'lost sales' there never were serious buyers anyway. The 'time wasters' you get from classified ads. Some people are actually fascinated by the ecommerce system and jump off the ride just before the end.

3) Many are 'dummy' or 'trial' sales. I feel there is a strong argument that some online shoppers actually go through the purchase system a couple of times before actually committing themselves. I have heard a number og people say that they do this.

This is a really interesting topic, one that bothers me as an ecommerce vendor.

I had an experience the other night, which I hadn't thought about before. I was browsing a site looking for an article to purchase, already had the rough market price and wanted to see if I could find it cheaper. The site didn't list any prices, but they had exactly what I wanted, colour, model etc, only by going to the final payment page, was the price revealed.

It was more than I could get it at another site, so I abandoned the sale. It hadn't occurred to me beforehand and I have now been actively searching for sites that do this. In the last 4 days I have found over 2 dozen sites, where price is not indicated until you get onto the actual checkout phase. Could this be part of the problem why there are such high abandon rates, because people can't see the price?

If this is the case and not just a few random ecommerce sites, then surely the shop owners or designers are at fault for not indicating the price in plain view.

Just a thought.

Ian

Suppliers of the finest English promotional Confectionery

www.englishdelights.com">href="http://www.englishdelights.com">www.englishdelights.com

Importers and Exporters of Durafix Aluminium Welding Products

www.easyweld.co.uk

As an extra point - people can, and do, use shopping carts as 'reminders'.

Speaking personally there are often times that I visit a site and see an item out of impulse. Not planning to buy it right there and then, but also not wanting to forget it, I add the item to the cart. A lot of sites assign you a cookie IDs that then record your items, even after you close your browser.

Maybe, as I design websites, I use what I know to my advantage - but I have found, through research, that others do this too.

I do believe there are many reasons why people 'abandon their carts' , a discussion that has gone on for a good few years now, all people are different, want different things and act in different ways - but one is key and that is highlighted with many confusing ecommerce sites out that (I visited a leading UK attractions ecommerce store yesterday and found it very poorly designed and very unuser friendly) and if people are confused they are not likely to part with their money.

Dean

C2 Web Design

http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Make it simple to order.  I mean really simple.  From a developers perspecive building an e-commerce solution should be done with the most incompetent IT user in mind.

Be honest.  Plaster your real price all over the product, and dont forget the delivery charge.

Over time, by using a monitoring tool you can analyse at which point during the check-out process where users/customers bail out.  When you've identified the location you can make an educated attempt at resolving the issue.

And, in our opinion, if you're serious about e-commerce then you will not even consider using PayPal as this in our experience is where so many sites are getting it all wrong.

Keep it simple, honest, fast, and transparent.