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Tag: shopping carts

  • Shopping Cart Abandonment Still A Major Issue For Businesses

    Shopping Cart Abandonment Still A Major Issue For Businesses

    Shopping cart abandonment has plagued ecommerce businesses for years, and you might think that things would have gotten better as more people have grown accustomed to shopping online, technologies have improved, and a vast array of solutions have become available. However, things have only gotten worse, and shoppers have gotten choosier about their shopping habits.

    Do you consider shopping cart abandonment to be one of the biggest obstacles your online business faces? Let us know in the comments.

    Baymard.com recently calculated the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate based on 29 different studies containing statistics on e-commerce shopping cart abandonment. The study with the lowest rate (55%) was from Forrester and Shop.org in 2010. The one with the highest (80.3%) was from Rejoiner in 2012. The average from all of them was 68.07%. That’s still pretty high.

    One of the top reasons that people abandon their shopping carts is that shipping costs are too high. Last fall, UPS and comScore partnered on a study, which found that as many as 81% of online shoppers in the U.S. indicated free shipping played a major role in their experience. 9 out of ten shoppers said they abandon shopping carts, while 6 out of 10 said they’ve done so after finding out that shipping costs made the price higher than expected. Half said they abandoned carts because their order value wasn’t large enough to qualify for free shipping.

    Other reasons included people not being ready to purchase, but wanting to save the cart for later or wanting to get an idea of the cost for comparison, getting distracted and forgetting to complete a purchase, and preferred payment options not being offered. eMarketer put together this chart looking at these reasons across different regions based on the study:

    They also note research from Visual Website Optimizer, which found unexpected shipping costs to be the most common reason for abandonment in the U.S. and a poll from the e-tailing group, in which 64% cited high shipping costs.

    Nextopia recently put out this infographic looking at shoping cart abandonment based on information from Shopify, Econsultancy, and CPCStrategy.

    Last month, Business Insider put out a report looking at shopping cart abandonment, and finding that as much as $4 trillion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online shopping carts this year, but that as much as 63% of that is potentially recoverable by “savvy online retailers”.

    “An abandoned shopping cart does not automatically translate to a ‘lost sale,’ because three-fourths of shoppers who have abandoned shopping carts say they plan to return to the retailer’s website or store to make a purchase, according to data from SeeWhy,” says Cooper Smith, a senior analyst for BI Intelligence. “Online-only retailers are at a disadvantage to “omnichannel” retailers in this respect because they have fewer channels through which to recover lost sales.”

    “Retailers can reduce the rate of abandonment and increase conversions by streamlining the checkout process and also by retargeting shoppers with emails after they’ve left a website,” he adds. “Initial emails, sent three hours after a consumer abandons a cart, average a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate, according to Listrak.”

    The BI study also found that that the number one reason people abandoned shopping carts in 2014 was because shipping costs were more than expected.

    “Another way of bringing your visitors back to the site is with retargeting ads,” writes Heidi Pungartnik at DesignForFounders. “Amazon does a great job with those — have you ever browsed for a, say, bento box only to end up only seeing ads for different bento boxes all over the web?”

    She also points to a Compete study, which found that in addition to improving cart abandonment rates, 93% of shoppers buy more when it’s offered.

    Shipping costs are only one issue. The rise of mobile use is not helping shopping cart abandonment. 84% of mobile uses use their devices for shopping, according to Nielsen, but that doesn’t mean shopping sites are catering to these users as well as they should be.

    As you may know, Google is getting ready to implement a mobile-friendly ranking signal to its mobile search results, lighting a fire under sites to get their acts together. This could help in the shopping cart abandonment department as well, as a mobile-friendly checkout process should lead to more conversions.

    As it tries to get sites using Google Wallet, the company says, “Typically, mobile shoppers have to fill out up to 25 fields to checkout. It’s no wonder up to 97% of them abandon their shopping carts.”

    Have you been able to improve your shopping cart abandonment rate or is it getting worse as time goes on? Discuss.

  • Tips For Increasing the Chances of Customers Buying From You Online

    In the fast-paced digital age where everyone wants a piece of that sweet Internet money, competition for small businesses is greater than ever. Fortunately there are  more tools available to small businesses than ever as well. Still, there are so many factors to consider, and so little time. 

    WebProNews sat down with Paul Boisvert of Yahoo Small Business to talk about some things that small e-commerce companies are doing wrong and how they can improve their approaches to ultimately get more sales. 

    Making the Most of Limited Time and Resources

    "The big issue with any small business is having enough time," says Boisvert. "There’s so many different trends that are out there, having to keep up on the education with what’s new…what’s current, what are the new tools they should be using, what are the new trends…it’s a little bit daunting, and so we try to simplify things with our services, and try to educate them and direct their attention to things that are going to generate the highest ROI."

    In fact, this subject came up more than once at PubCon this week. Read here and here for some additional thoughts on this from Chris Brogan and the New York Times’ tech columnist David Pogue respectively. 

    "In a nutshell, the biggest thing I see that they’re doing wrong is they’re not focusing," says Boisvert. "They’re not embracing their passion. When people get in and try to sell every product to every single person…you can’t possibly be an expert on everything."

    "You know, Amazon has tens of thousands of employees, but they have people that are experts on their specific topics," he adds. "So all small businesses need to kind of embrace what that core product is that they really have a lot of knowledge on, and then you’ll be able to speak with authenticity. You’ll be able to speak with authority, and that’s going to persuade people to buy from you, and buy the products that you’re selling as opposed to anywhere where they could get the same product."

    But e-commerce success isn’t just about time and product focus. Things like site usability and shopping cart optimization can make a huge difference when it comes to getting people to actually buy.

    Improving Your Shopping Cart Process

    "A few pointers I would throw out on shopping cart optimization…" says Boisvert. "You obviously want to have your contact information there, you want your 1-800 number there if you have one (if not, if you have a live chat, you want it there)…it’s just a reassurance. Even if people don’t use it, they know that that number is there. You’re a reputable company, and if they have an issue they can contact you. It’s not hidden."

    "So you kind of want to reduce all the fears that people have as they proceed into that checkout process, so they don’t have any of those questions and they can just pull out their wallet and pay you," he explains.

    "Other things like trust marks are also very important," Boisvert adds. "Just having them on the site and reassuring somebody that you’re a brand that another larger company has vetted to a certain degree, whether that’s Yahoo or Verisign or any of the other trust marks that are out there, but those are really important in kind of reducing the fears that people have."

    Trust is one thing, but you also have to think about the process itself. How easy is it for a customer to check out? If there’s any hassle involved, you risk losing the sale, because your competition is only a click away. 

    How Many Pages Should The Checkout Process Include?

    "You do have to guide the consumer,’ says Boisvert. "You want to have a smooth flow. You want to reduce friction in your checkout process, but I think the whole argument around one-page or two-page or three-page is largely overblown. I’ve talked with many merchants. They’ve tested both versions. Our shopping cart supports all the various combinations: order review in place, order review not in place, single-page, multi-page…people have tested it, and they find out that the results for the most part are the same."

    "I think the key differences are the people that are kind of on the edges," he notes. "If you sell a very low average order value, like a $20 purchase such as beads for jewelry or something like that, a single-page checkout makes sense because it doesn’t require a lot of having to address a lot of fears and uncertainties with a low purchase value."

    "However, on the flipside, if you’re selling expensive watches or appliances, you want a multi-step process so somebody can feel comfortable with you…comfortable with the product they’re going to get at the end of this checkout process," he concludes. 

    Watch the video above for more from Boisvert and some things Yahoo Small Business specifically is doing for e-commerce businesses.

     

  • Getting More Facebook Fans and Monetizing Them

    It seems like Facebook is controlling more and more of users’ online time, and that doesn’t appear to be on pace to change anytime soon. Facebook is already on the path to controlling more content, online retail, and online identification, and who knows what all announcements we’ll see come out of the company’s F8 developer conference this week? To what extent Facebook will dominate these aspects of our web use (it’s grown a great deal in search too by the way) is yet to be seen, but the point is, Facebook is giving users a lot more reasons to use it, and in some cases it’s not really even a conscious decision. See the recent South Park episode for a good illustration about how Facebook continues to suck more people in. Facebook is where the people are online.

    How important is Facebook to your online business? Share your thoughts here.

    We’ve written several times recently about Facebook’s role in e-commerce. WebProNews spoke with Christian Taylor CEO of Payvment, which has been offering a Facebook storefront application to retailers since the beginning of November, and is now giving them a way to get people more interested in buying from them. It’s simple really – if a Facebook user comes across one of the retailers utilizing Payvment, they will be able to get discounts on merchandise for becoming a fan. That ought to drive some interest in Facebook e-commerce and user engagement with retail brands.

    "As Facebook’s F8 conference approaches, many companies still wonder how they can transform Facebook from a "soft" relationship and marketing tool to something that will actually have an effect on their company’s bottom line.  For the first time, this new e-commerce solution will allow that to happen," Pavyment says.

    Sidenote: A new study finds that questions businesses have about how they should be using social media have changed quite a bit within a year. Last year it was more about tactics. Now businesses want to know about ROI.

    First, it’s important to understand how Payvment’s Facebook storefront app works. Unlike some of the other Facebook e-commerce apps out there, Payvment:

    A. Doesn’t take users away from Facebook, and lets them pay via PayPal or credit card through PayPal (most likely Facebook credits as well before long)

    B. Is completely free (in fact, Taylor tells me "it will always be free no matter what happens.")

    C. Acts as a network of retailers from which customers can make multiple purchases across, all in one checkout process (money is then divided up among the retailers on the back-end)

    D. Provides users with a way to discover additional retailers on Facebook as each retailer’s page provides a gateway to additional brand pages for shopping.

    Now back to that new incentive feature. A retailer using Payvment can go in and simply set a certain percentage they want to offer as a discount in exchange for the user becoming a fan of the page. Here’s what a page utilizing the platform might look like to a fan and to a non-fan, respectively:

    Payvment Retail Site as seen by a fan (with discount)

    Payvment Retail Site as seen by a non-fan (without discount)

    I raised the point that when a Facebook user "fans" a brand, Facebook automatically alerts that user’s friends that they have become a fan of said brand. I wondered if that might be looked upon as something of an endorsement, and if a fan is getting an incentive in the form of a discount to for being a "fan" of that brand, how would the FTC view that in light of its much-publicized guidelines on endorsements?

    Taylor made the point that Payvment and its retailers aren’t actually giving the user gifts or paying them anything. They’re just taking money off for becoming a fan. He equates it to becoming a member of a club or joining a mailing list. Mailing lists don’t alert all of the friends of the person who signs up that they are fans, however. Taylor maintains that Payvment does not create such alerts, implying that this would be more on Facebook to address, if it were to be considered an issue at all. As we see more Facebook e-commerce platforms become available as I’m sure we will, and others copy this strategy (which also seems likely), this may indeed become something Facebook would want to address.

    Either way, Payvment has a pretty interesting concept on its hands. "While Facebook has become an excellent platform to build or strengthen brand awareness and communities, companies and their enthusiastic fans have been unable to take that final step between being a fan and being a buyer," says Taylor.

    The new version of Payvment’s Facebook e-commerce application lets Facebook users add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts. The feature includes spam protection, so sellers can control inappropriate content in the comment and review section of their storefront.

    Due to Facebook’s terms of use, Payvment users are not permitted to sell adult content, alcoholic beverages, tobacco product, ammunition/firearms, items that promote hate, criminal/terrorist activities, or items that infringe upon the rights of a third party.

    On a related note, Facebook recently partnered with two offer providers so users can earn Credits without having to pay directly. As InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon noted, "For users, this means another way to get Credits without paying — this may increase spending on Credits for social games and other applications on Facebook." (emphasis added)

    Taylor expects a lot of talk about Facebook Credits to come out of Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference this week, and he said that Payvment would definitely integrate Credits into its system.

    Whether you are going to use an app like Payvment or not, it shows you that monetizing Facebook fans can be done, and if social media ROI is one of your concerns, here is a good example to look at. Again, I would expect this kind of thing to become more commonplace within the Facebook ecosystem, which is growing across the web in general.

    Would you offer Facebook users discounts for becoming fans? Let us know.