Abandoned shopping carts

[4little1s]

Anyone know of any or use any tools that can report on abandoned shopping carts. We use Actinic and it would really help if we could get some stats on it somehow...

[ozbon]

Google analytics is a good start.

But Actinic should be able to list abandoned carts anyway. I don't know for sure, as I don't use it myself, but I'd have thought it's pretty standard functionality

[dynabid]

You could put a post in the actinic forums http://community.actinic.com/ somebody there may be able to help you :)

[profitxchange]

what are you going to do with the stats? unless they tell you why they did not complete.

I will often go thru the checkout process because there is insufficient info re shipping/delivery on the main site.

[Christiane]

what are you going to do with the stats? unless they tell you why they did not complete.

I will often go thru the checkout process because there is insufficient info re shipping/delivery on the main site.

Very true, same here, if I can't see the delivery charges and the methods of payments, I might not finish the order. Having to register can also be a turn off, so if you can add the option to buy without creating an account, you might want to try that too.

[4little1s]

Ok thanks everyone

[KidsBeeHappy]

Might not be a shopping cart problem, might be a payment gateway problem. We had issues a while back when protx changed something on their site, and it resulted in the carts being "abandonned" however, in reality, the customer just couldn't pay.

[KidsBeeHappy]

i'm using the clicky stats trial, and at the moment, i'm dead impressed with it, it shows individual visitor progress through your site. there's a 21 day free trial.

[maxine]

I abandoned a cart on coffeecup.com once (as it didnt like the start date of my credit card) and I was really impressed that I got an email literally seconds later saying "Hey Maxine, Where did you go?"

So, there must be some good software out there - perhaps you could ask coffeecup what they use as they sell a whole lot of products like this so it might be there own

:)

[Mister B]

I abandoned a cart on coffeecup.com once (as it didnt like the start date of my credit card) and I was really impressed that I got an email literally seconds later saying "Hey Maxine, Where did you go?"

:)

That sounds really cool and would be interesting. It would also be interesting to see if it freaked anybody out by being too "real."

Mister B

[Jenni384]

I agree with the above posts; lack of delivery or payment info will make me set up a cart and go through the checkout just to see. If I then have to register an account I will probably just leave - it's too much faff just to see how much delivery charges are, or whether the prices included VAT or not.

I wish every website owner would state delivery charges clearly - this is what makes an online deal competitive or not vs the high street. The base cost is cheaper, but the delivery might mean I'm better off getting it in town tomorrow, so it's important to be able to find that info easily.

[Dymo King]

If you go into the orders section of actinic and select 'pending payment service provider' then that will give you a list of 'late stage' drop-outs. That is, people who put the stuff in their basket and completed most of the cart (ie. address details) but didn't complete the order.

If the customer goes to all the trouble of entering their address details, but doesn't complete the order, then either there is someone wrong near the end of the checkout (they don't trust the payment page for example) or, more likely, they had a problem with the payment screens.

So this can be useful for checking the reliability of you payment provider. And as you now have the customers details you can email them and try to rescue the sale, or at least find out why they abandoned the cart...

As mentioned by others, early stage abandonment is often caused by people just checking the delivery charges and if prices include VAT or not - which is an indicator that you need to make this information clearer elsewhere on your site.

[4little1s]

Thanks DK, I do use the pending payment section and generally contact people if it didn't work out for them. What I am trying to find out though is before they get to the stage of putting in their details if you know what I mean, like the early stages...,

[Dymo King]

One partial solution is to use something like liveperson. It is actually chat software but the console allows you to see customers on your site in real time, which means you can see which pages they're on. Sometimes you might see them apparently going round in circles in the basket, which implies some sort of confusion or technical problem. And the great thing is that you can then initiate a chat with them and ask them if they need any help, which will help you figure out what the problem was so you can fix it. We don't use it any more because we just got so busy we couldn't copy with all the chat requests and no longer had time to watch people wandering around the site.

But it could be useful if you just starting out and have more time than customers ;)

If you don't want a general chat facility on the site you could just restrict the chat button to the basket and checkout, just make it stand out and say something like "Having problems with your order? Click now to chat live with one of our operators".

But mostly there will be a lot of different explanations and reasons (customers are confused by something, competitors checking out your site, customers want to place an order but something is putting them off, technical problems, looking for some T&C/delivery costs/vat etc). As previously mentioned a lot of people will add stuff to the basket on several competing sites just to compare the total order cost and see who's cheapest. That way one site gets an order and several others sit there wondering why they get 'abandoned' carts...

[4little1s]

Thanks for that, I will check it out

[fisicx]

Have you used the checkout process yourself?

I've just tried and it's horrible. There is no logical flow of information and it takes 4 clicks to get from the homepage to Stage 1 of 4 in the checkout. You have some pointless dropdowns in stage 1 as you only deliver to the UK and I have to agree to your T&C that have almost no relevance to the checkout process. There is a 'remove' tick box but no apparent way to actually remove the item. At stage 2 you now tell me there is a delivery charge and that is mandatory but there are no options. Stage 3 is a feedback form and another dropdown for payment type but only one option. Stage 4 is an empty page that then takes me off site.

10 clicks from homepage to payment information - that's about 6 clicks too many apart from all the other issues.

Every barrier to put in the way of completing a sale will lose your customers so it might be worth reworking your site to reduce all those conversion blocks.

[Dymo King]

I haven't seen 4little1's checkout, but a lot of those points sound like well known issues with the Actinic software. The long checkout process is probably one of the biggest complaints amongst developers. Having said that it's possible to shave a page or two off depending on the setup...

Have a search on here to see how to fix a few of those issues -

http://community.actinic.com/

[EBusinessDevelopment]

A good tool to use would be Google Analytics, they provide a decent set of reports that analyze your traffic and its free :). Im not 100% sure but I think they can also display the leaving pages of visitors. From that you may be able to get an idea of the section or step of the process your vistors leave on.

[4little1s]

Have been reading the Actinic forum and there seems to be as lot of people saying the checkout process is rather long winded. I was kind of hoping that the latest version of Actinic was going to reduce the steps. I still think I can shave a page or two off in other areas though

[Dymo King]

try this thread, someone has written a new checkout for v8 -

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=36062&highlight=checkout

Not sure if it works with the brand new v9 though. this is unsupported by actinic though, and they were asking for a link back to their site at the time as 'payment', not sure if this policy has changed.

[fisicx]

Dymo king, is the 'feedback' page part of the process or can this be removed?

4little1s, the whole process is just so ungainly. Have you actually used your own process? Try to buy 3 items from different parts of the site then remove 2 of them from your basket. Then have them sent to a different address and then try to go back and change the quantity then go forwards again then then decide you want it gift wrapped.

I just gave up - I couldn't do what I wanted, I was forced to do what you YOU want. As a customer, I don't care about problems with actinic, as far a I'm concerned it's your website so if you want my custom then you need to fix it.

Sorry if that came over a little harsh but this is the reality of internet shopping. If you upset or annoy a potential customer they will never ever return. Every abandoned cart is a lost sale that will never return. Which means you are going to have to make some tough descisions, either you continue to lose business or you consider investing in a new ecommenre system.

PS: fix the redirect from .co.uk to .com. I shouldn't have to click on a link.

[Dymo King]

Just taken a look. 4little1's, would recomend you change the configuration in actinic so that when you add to the basket it goes straight into the basket, the 'confirm/cancel' intermediate screen is adding an unecessary step and may lead to confusion (people may click back to add more products thinking the item has been added because they didn't read the text)

Would also ditch the save/retrieve buttons on the basket page, they just adding clutter/confusion. 'continue' should be renamed as it's not clear what it means (continue shopping or continue to the checkout?)

fisicx - the 'feedback screen' is the 'delivery address' screen, but if you don't say you want a different address earlier on then the fields are not displayed. But it is also the screen where you choose the payment method so can't be removed.

the next 'blank' page with the next button should quickly bounce to the payment provider, so there is something wrong with that page or someone removed the bounce from the template. Again it can't be removed, but normally it would just flash up briefly.

I think you might be able to get rid of the first screen if you only ship to one country, but you'd have to look that up. But you certainly don't need to ask for the country twice (unless you envisage people in one country ordering with a delivery address in another).

[bizman99]

check out clicktale.com add small bit of javascript code to each of your pages and you can record you visitor sessions, then play back the interactions and see the drop out points or areas of confusion the user is having on your site... nice cheap alternative to some usability testing (won't do all you need, but lots of good insight).

[fisicx]

I think you might be able to get rid of the first screen if you only ship to one country, but you'd have to look that up. But you certainly don't need to ask for the country twice (unless you envisage people in one country ordering with a delivery address in another).

Except that the only option available is the UK.

[Dymo King]

Except that the only option available is the UK.Yes, that's what I meant. If that's the only option, and there are no plans to change it, then I think that page can be switched off within actinic.

[Corin Adlard]

<<Anyone know of any or use any tools that can report on abandoned shopping carts. We use Actinic and it would really help if we could get some stats on it somehow...>>

There are a some tools out there to monitor abondoned carts.

Two good tools are Google Analytics and the SeeWhy Abandonment Tracker.

Both are free and pretty simple to get going with...

[J-Wholesale]

If the customer goes to all the trouble of entering their address details, but doesn't complete the order, then either there is someone wrong near the end of the checkout (they don't trust the payment page for example) or, more likely, they had a problem with the payment screens.

That's not always true. Quite often, the problem will be a maxed out credit card. When we built our system, we built in a notification when customers left our site and went to the payment collector, so we always knew when an order was about to be placed. From day 1, there was a percentage that stopped at that point, and didn't pay. At first, we though it meant something must be wrong, and we followed it up with them, as we had all their contact details.

Almost every time, it turned out to be an issue with their own credit card - usually, they simply didn't have enough remaining funds to cover the transaction. What we've noticed since, is that most customers who abandon at the payment stage return the next day, or even the next week, and buy anyway, so we stopped hassling them and left them to it.

As long as your payment screens are up to scratch and as few as possible, don't worry about the drop outs, but you do need to know how many there are, and who they are.