The term ‘web cart abandonment’ refers to consumers ending their purchase somewhere between adding an item to their shopping cart and final payment being made. There can be a number of reasons for this occurring from complicated processes at the checkout, to consumers feeling unhappy with the information being requested.

What makes cart abandonment so frustrating for e-commerce owners is that all efforts to draw the customer in, offer the right product and get them to place the item in their basket have succeeded only to lose the all important sale at the last hurdle.

Not all reasons for abandonment are under your control, there will always be those people who dash to the phone, realise the credit card is maxed or just decide they didn’t really want that item after all but understanding the reasons under your control can help leverage additional value from your site.

Although things are improving year on year (web cart abandonment rates fell from 59.8% in 2006 to 52.1% in 2007 according to Marketing Sherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2007) e-commerce owners can still go along way to drive levels downwards and increase site profitability.

Ask yourself would you willingly accept any other source of such a loss of revenue to your business? Can you really afford to ignore losses exceeding 50%? What profits could you expect if you improved your checkout and cart processes?

If you are a typical e-commerce owner I expect you would like to ensure the highest levels of returns from your site. You may have worked really hard on SEO strategies, paid for sophisticated features and bespoke programming, brought in designers, copywriters and the works all to lose the sale only moments away from the money hitting your account.

So what causes potential customers to retreat from a sale?

Popular reasons for cart abandonment include; unexpected charges at checkout, products out of stock, requirements for the customer to register before purchase, limited payment options, postage or delivery costs too high, no clear delivery information, lack of contact details or complicated / time consuming processes.

Careful consideration and research is needed to fully understand issues. It may be that some areas can be addressed while at the same time causing an issue in another. It is important, as with most web developments, to test, evaluate and modify your systems on a regular basis to ensure that your site remains ahead.

Setting up tracking on your site to measure activity is vital to making the right decisions with regard to your shopping cart. You need to gather information relating to the following areas on an ongoing basis and especially before tinkering with any site processes;

• Abandoned Carts

Track the overall number of carts being abandoned.

• Abandoned Products

Track whether abandonment figures are the same for all products / product ranges?

• Abandoned Units

Establish how many units are being abandoned. Some research can be skewed by results from customers mistakenly placing multiples of a product into their cart.

• Where are they abandoning their purchase?

Set up tracking to establish the areas where the greatest numbers of potential customers abandon their purchases.

Once you are armed with this information you are ready to begin investigating the problems and making the necessary amendments.

Take the information gathered and use the site to make a number of your own purchases. Can you see any reasons to justify why customers are abandoning their items at these stages? Can you see how the process could be improved?

Take your research to recent or current users of the site and ask them why they stopped their purchase or how you could improve the usability of the site or shopping cart. Run usability tests on the products pages or the checkout areas to establish any known issues.

Once you feel you have all the information, try to summarise all your findings by category. i.e. Process too long or Postage charge too high. Use this list to plan a fix or series of fixes for each issue. It may be that some issues will cost too much at this stage to implement; however, delayed plans to deal with these areas should still be made with a schedule detailing when they will receive further attention.

Before carrying out any changes decide on a method of measuring the results of each fix and ensure that appropriate tracking is set up to catch the required information. Where your fix has not worked you may need to look at alternative plans to address the same issue.

This process shouldn’t be a one off. Customer habits change all the time and as such regular reviews, testing and implementation should be a part of any ongoing online strategy. Schedule times to regular monitor performance and tweak as necessary. It could be that minor changes in the sites usability reap huge rewards for your profitability.

Where you don’t have the time to monitor these areas yourself enlist consultants or your web development team to track details and suggest regular changes or upgrades. Many companies will offer retainers where they will identify issues or areas for development which could lead to increased profits for your business.

Below I have listed 10 more simple areas to watch with your website checkout process. These offer some basic guidance on how your site may be improved with a little bit of tweaking.

1. No Hidden Extras
Don’t try adding hidden costs at the checkout. Customers will feel you’re abusing their trust and will not only abandon carts but may never buy from you in the future.

2. Provide Information
Don’t surround your store in mystery. Make customers aware of the process involved in making a purchase, be sure to explain; total costs including postage, delivery details, availability, returns policy and telephone contact details should they have an issue at the beginning of their purchase.

3. Don’t ask for too much too soon.
Some websites still make the mistake of asking the customer to register when placing items in the basket. Allow your customer to feel ready to make a purchase and pay before asking for too much information.

4. Keep it simple.
Limit the number of choices that potential customers have to make when checking out. Higher drop out rates have bee found on those sites with the highest number of choices.

5. Offer payment options
There’s nothing more annoying than getting to the checkout in a store and finding out that they don’t accept the card your holding. Try and offer as many payment options as you can.

6. Ask for the minimum
Don’t be too greedy for information. Minimise the information taken to that required to process a transaction. Additional info requests increase your chances that your buyer will not complete the purchase.

7. Be contactable
Display clear contact details throughout the checkout process, such as phone number and email, plus provide a live online chat where possible. Customers like to know that they can contact someone should something go wrong with their order.

8. Show you’re site’s Secure
Ensure potential customers know that transactions processed through your site are secure and encrypted. Explain any company policies on protection of consumer information and privacy as well as displaying any safeguard logos.

9. Get their email first
Ask for emails near the beginning of the checkout process, preferably on page one. Sample customers who have abandoned shopping carts and email them to find out why they decided to abandon their purchase when they did.

10. Own your own checkout
Ensure that your checkout process is part of your system rather than forwarding checkout processes to third party sites.

This piece was originally written for catalog | e-business magazine – [published April 2008: Issue 151].

If you would like to see the finished piece you can view it on the ‘Press Coverage’ page of our news feed site by clicking here

With many companies, organisations and individuals generating new content all the time it is worth taking the time to see how each may improve the way you do business, research or networking online.

In this post I have attempted to catalogue some of the many sources I have found useful in my role researching and advising companies at uknetweb on the possibilities presented by Web 2.0.

Some of the links refer to other list blogs cataloging the best of the web, others are my own selections and some are link to directories I found useful when browsing the web.

Free Useful Software

Open Office – Why pay for MS Office when you can get most of the functionality for free with Open Office?

A suite of software with programs offering many of the functions found within the Microsoft Office Suite. Worth downloading and playing around with – it works across operating systems and platforms . (The Draw program is particularly useful for preparing flowcharts and process models.) If you’re interested how these programs are free – click here.

Open Workbench – Specifically for Project Managers

Similar to OpenOffice this is a program for Project Managers available as a Free Full Download. This neat little bit of software has all the functions to make a project run according to plan and timescales.

Free Online Applications and Downloads

Flock – Manage the Web 2.0 World

Already the subject of one of my past entries I am still loving the functionality of Flock, an alternative version of the Firefox browser system. The Flock browser brings together all of your social networks, bookmarking sites, picture sites, blogs, rss feeds and much much more.

WordPress – More than just a blog site!

WordPress is one of many free blogging systems available free of charge on the web. With loads of functionality in the hosted or download ble versions this great piece of open source content management software makes it easy to publish anything online. Try it out to see what I mean.

Slideshare.net – Get presenting to the World.

I first used Slideshare to publish a presentation given by my MD to a local Chamber of Commerce (click here to view – E-commerce 2008 and Beyond). I never intended Slideshare to be anything more than a convenient place to host presentations for interested parties to download; however, on the first morning after uploading we received 65 viewers from across the globe.

Ning.com – Host your own network

If you’re getting bored of using other social networking sites, Ning.com provides a great location to host your own network. Featuring many of the functions you’d expect to find on other social network sites, Ning gives you control over the name, content and style of your own network. Desktoptwo – The Desktop that travels with you. A handy little online environment featuring a range of online applications accessible through one secure online virtual desktop. Features 1gb of free storage.

The Best Lists

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

The title says it all – Packed with links to useful software that gives you the opportunity to put two fingers up at our dear friend – the Big Mr.G.

25 Firefox Extensions to make you more productive

If you have switched to Firefox or Flock this list features a host of add-ons / extensions that make your day that little bit more productive. Warning: you might not like the results of MeeTimer – an add on that identifies where you spend your time online – splitting it into neat sections which include; ‘procrastination’.

ReadWriteWeb – List of Web 2.0 Lists

As it says this is a list of the best lists of Web 2.0 applications, this is a veritable list bonanza!

All Things Web 2.0 – Top 100 Top Rated

This is a link to a directory of the Top 100 (Top Rated) Web 2.0 resources. Navigate the site to find apps etc listed by top recommendations, number of users or category. Really useful site to keep up to date with the latest developments on Web 2.0.

I hope you find these useful. If you have any of your own suggestions please let me know and I’ll get them up here as soon as I can.

]]> http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/the-best-free-software-online-apps-and-lists-on-the-web-20/feed/ 0 http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/feature-in-catalogue-e-business-out-now/ http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/feature-in-catalogue-e-business-out-now/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:39:28 +0000 Aren Grimshaw http://uknetwebnews.wordpress.com/?p=11 We are proud to announce that our Managing Director, Toby Parkins has just been featured in industry magazine, ‘catalogue | e-business’.

Writing on the subject of web cart abandonment, a subject close to the hearts of any e-commerce store owner, Toby suggests a range tactics that can be used to increase site sale conversions and insure higher online store profits.

The full feature will be reproduced on our blog within the coming weeks. In the meantime why not order your copy from subs@catalog-biz.com

*Please note a printing mistake has led to our company name being included as ‘ukneweb’ – it should of course be ‘uknetweb’. Anyone interested in learning more about the company should visit our corporate site at www.uknetweb.com

In tests conducted by St.Agnes based, Uknetweb, serious security flaws were found in 2 out of 3 sites, despite them appearing to have well developed sites with proper safeguards against hackers and other criminals.

This comes at a time when fear of ‘e-crime’ is at an all time high and local online store owners need to be aware that they hold a duty of care over their customer details and their own sensitive customer information.

The site owners, who commissioned Uknetweb to perform the test hacks, were shown how access to their confidential customer details took less than half an hour in each case.

This research achieved similar results to those found by the BBC Nationally in October, where they found online hackers selling ‘how to guides’ and login details for web shops.

The BBC reported a hacker boasting, “I got many shops and tons of daily orders. I hack a shop in 3-4 hours and sell it for $100-500” and thanked “stupid admins” for making basic mistakes which allowed him to break in.

With much internet crime now coming from organised criminal gangs looking to sell this information on at low cost to a range of criminals, business owners need to wise up and ensure they protect themselves and their customers appropriately.

In many cases the original hacker does not use the details, opting instead to sell them on as false identities to be used for acquiring credit and identity documents for resale to unsavoury characters associated with drug trafficking or child pornography.

Managing Director, Toby Parkins said, “Hackers will always get more sophisticated as time goes on; however, in many cases the simplest levels of protection have been ignored.”

“The best way to ensure your own website security is to get a full technical specialist to build your site rather than cheaper off the shelf developers who have only basic knowledge of the coding systems.”

Any company concerned with their own internet security can request a low cost security check from Uknetweb by calling 01872 555933 or visiting www.uknetweb.com

Ends