Great expectations Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM
, By Ken Magill
JobZone
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“First, get your checkout as clean and as
high converting as you possibly can” by removing any and all
distractions, says Kavanagh. He adds that several analytics packages
make it possible to see where online transactions are breaking down so
you can take steps to shore up the process.
“Today's
best practices are actually pretty simple,” he says. Through the free
Google Analytics or any of the other more expensive analytics packages,
“you can look at what people call a shopping cart funnel. You can keep
track of what people do from the time they hit ‘proceed to checkout’
until they actually complete an order.”
Beyond
analytics packages, there is another source of information on why
online transactions break down that not nearly enough merchants take
advantage of: the customers themselves.
“If
you're looking at your analytics and you're baffled about why you're
losing people, you've got the name, address, city, state, zip, and
phone number on a bunch of folks who abandoned,” says Kavanagh. “Call
'em up and ask them what's going on.”
He
warns, however, that before calling someone who abandoned a shopping
cart, the merchant should check order-history records and make sure the
customer didn't simply make the purchase through another channel.
“I've
seen many times on business-to-business sites where customers have hit
that final page of checkout, and then they actually print it out,
transfer it to a P.O. and fax it in,” says Kavanagh.
Once
a multichannel merchant has got an analytics package in place and is
sure the checkout process is as clean as possible, try adding maybe a
cross-sell and see what happens. “You will probably lose some people
because of it,” Kavanagh says. “The questions is: Do you gain enough in
the increased average order size to make up for what you're losing?”
Embrace abandoned-cart e-mails
Another
fairly straightforward area where online merchants can take steps to
close more sales but aren't, is abandoned-shopping cart e-mails. And
no, they won't freak people out if they're done right, says Kavanagh.
He recommends a three-part series. The first should be an e-mail that
goes out within a day that looks to be from a Web administrator.
The
e-mail should note that the customer abandoned the cart and ask if
there was some sort of technical problem, offer a technical-assistance
phone number if there was, and a link to the cart to complete the
purchases if there wasn't.
“The
No. 1 reason people abandon carts before they checkout is they get
distracted by something,” says Kavanagh. “E-commerce shopping mostly
occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. You know how it is;
you're shopping and then suddenly an I.M. [instant message] appears or
your boss comes up behind you, and you get distracted before you make
the purchase. This is why abandoned-shopping-cart e-mails are so
fundamental.”
The
second abandoned-shopping-cart e-mail could be a simple reminder
saying: “Did you forget something?” with the contents of the abandoned
cart displayed. The third abandoned-shopping-cart e-mail Kavanagh
recommends is a play on the old “this might be the last catalog you get
from us” cover.
“The
abandoned-cart e-mail twist on this strategy, however, should say
something like: ‘From time to time we delete shopping carts; if this is
something you want, please come back and buy it within the next couple
of days or call this number and finish,’” says Kavanagh. “Of course,
you don't really delete carts,” he adds.
One
reason more companies don't send abandoned-cart e-mails is the
difficulty in figuring out who should send them. For example, if the
merchant determines the e-mail service provider should send them, then
there is the challenge of delivering cart data to the vendor.
Kavanagh
says that whoever sends order confirmation e-mails — likely the
e-commerce platform provider — should also send the abandoned-cart
messages. “Whatever utility you're using to send confirmation e-mails,
just filter into that your abandoned-cart data and let that create your
series,” he says.
According
to Allurent's Grant, another reason people abandon carts is sticker
shock, which can be avoided simply by letting them know the price
before they get there.
“It's
not as common as it used to be, but it is just terrible that people
can't really see the full price until they get to the cart,” he says.
“Often, the only reason they went to the cart in the first place was to
find out the price. Now, some people will say you would have lost that
customer anyway, but I don't agree. I think there's value in setting
expectations. It always helps you convert more.”
He
adds that customers should be able to see the contents of the cart
right up until they hit “submit order,” and be given the opportunity to
change those contents.
“If
you aren't able to edit your cart at the point of submission, which is
the first time you've found out how much it's going to cost, that's a
problem,” he says.
Usability
testing is also imperative, says Grant. How often? “Every time you make
a change,” he says. “It's not that hard to go down to a Starbucks,
offer a $5 gift card and get 20 people. It doesn't have to be major.
And it doesn't have to be demographically or statistically significant
to get a sense of whether it's going to work.”
He adds that it is also imperative to use some sort of analytics package to see where the checkout process breaks down.
“Marketers spend so much to get people to their sites,” Grant says. “Once you have them, you just can't screw that up.”
