Abandoned shopping carts

[makeupqueen]

Just wanted an idea of the nuber of people that would abandon a shopping cart if they were asked to register for an account.
I dont mean to view prices, I mean like this

View site...choose products.. select checkout..create account..make payment


To be honest it would not bother me as I would have to give details anyway but I was just wondering how others felt about it

 

[Rob Holmes]

Definately - the shopping carts we install for people never take details before the product has been selected.

IMHO - the cart needs to look like it's just taking details but then sets up an account for them.

Rob

 

[mattk]

I'm not sure what you mean?

Do you mean that you have to register before you can put anything in your cart? If so, then this would definitely put me off. I like to be able to add stuff to the cart, see the total cost, including delivery, before I reigster and eventually buy.

 

[makeupqueen]

When I Say set up an account first . I mean you pick your products but to pay , you create an account. I dont mean that you have to create an account to view prices or anything like that
sorry If I wasnt clear

 

[MarkPearson]

Yes, I would like to see the full shoping process before having to progress and add my details.

 

[Deleted member 3454]

I agree with Matrixx and mattk - I always leave a site that asks me to register before I can put things in the cart and work out the total cost of the purchase.

Full information about costs must be available for the purchaser before they sign up. I don't mind giving certain details when I'm ready to purchase but object strongly to doing so just to be able to put things in the cart.

 

[SillyJokes]

Setting up an account always sucks for small sites.

Reasons?

It sounds like you are asking for more information than the wary customer is prepared to give.

It is an extra hoop for them to jump through.

When they return (if they return) they have to remember a poxy password just to shop so often the customer just uses the same password for all shops, compromising their security.

It's just plain arrogant to imagine that anyone thinks so much of your shop that they would willingly want to sign away their personal details to you.

It's frustrating to have spent time shopping and then be asked for information you don't want to give.

Having said all this.....

It's not always a bad thing to register with a store but you have to have a really great reason for people to come back to you regularly. On some sites it is fabulous, like Amazon, Tesco and John Lewis. It means you don't even have to get your credit card out to quicly place that rather onerous order.

But a little store which someone may never want to shop from again - it's absolute bobbins

 

[clairemackaness]

I agree with everything everyone has said here.

There....that was easy

 

[makeupqueen]

Hi
I understand what everyone is saying about putting their details in before they make a purchase. That is not what I meant. Quite a lot of sites will allow you to add items to your basket etc and when you check out it takes you to a screen that says " I am a returning customer" or " I need to register for an account" that is where the details are asked for and that is where I am wondering if people get put off. Do you just want to order pay and away! or does giving details at this point not matter to you.
I dont mean to bang on but every answer I have had seems to assume I meant BEFORE purchase (my fault)

 

[DavidHorn]

It depends how slick the process is. If I can fill out all of my billing and delivery information, and use that (without having to re-enter) to set up my account, then that's fine. If my email address becomes my username, then the only extra you're asking me for is a password - no big deal.

 

[SillyJokes]

No, no no, even after creating an order it is a massive no no.


When I look at those pages and my heart sinks. "OH flippin' heck, I've got to think up (and remember) another blinking password," (language moderated to protect young ears)

No, bother it, I'm not going to, there has to be somewhere else I can get this stuff without having to sell my soul.

When I return (if I return) I'll have to remember a poxy password just to shop. I'm sorry but I just don't like your shop enough to waste my time doing that.

The big tip is to look on the home page for an invitation to log in. See that and you are sure to be asked to register. Move on to the next site right then and there, don't waste any more time.

 

[Top Hat]

I don't like creating accounts, I don't like thinking of a password, or using the same one again.

* If I use the same password, its not secure
* If I think of a new one, that I will forget, and if I shop again have to go through the getting your password (in the past I've actually failed to complete a second order, because I could not recover my password)

The best way IMHO is to wait until the order is complete, then ask if they want to use these details to create an account.

Signing up for an account always feels a bit like, you're giving away your valuable details, and signing up to no end of spam.

 

[Astaroth]

Personally it doesnt bother me and to be honest I disagree with sillyjokes on the matter.

A few (relatively) small companies I have used have the option of "returning customer" and "new customer" but dont at any point mention the word "account". When you make a purchase you are emailed the invoice and given a password for if you want to return.

The one thing I would say is not to "force" people to use the account on return visits - if they have forgotten their password you may lose people who dont want to hit the lost password button and then have to wait for an email (and you can still capture the customer data/ track customer activity etc).

With accounts there are a lot of easy additional features you can give people (favourits/ wish list/ review previous orders etc) which may be attractive for some people and I doubt would turn anyone away because you offer the option.

 

[DuaneJackson]

This is interesting stuff. The process makeupqueen mentions is exactly hoe OSCommerce operates. We've just re-written an ecommerce site based on OSCommerce for www.porta-charge.co.uk and kept this 'feature'.

I'll have to look at a way of re-doing this without calling it an 'account'

 

[ewan]

Anyone looking for a cart... use RomanCart. Its worked wonders for me, and with just a little html knowledge it will fit seamlessly into nearly any website.

 

[crus]

Right, here is a bit of gold,

DONT FORCE A USER TO GIVE MORE INFORMATION THAN IS NEEDED TO TAKE PAYMENT AND DELIVER THE GOODS!,

apart from the email, and I can say that with utter confidence as this is how we used to run our mobile phone accessories.

just got all teary eyed when i looked back at it

http://web.archive.org/web/20021123054401/www.mobileaddons.com/

Anyway, our final iteration of the 'greed robot went' like this, completely open shoping cart, but we then offered a 10% discount to the pre checkout page if you enetered your email address, this was before the actual payment page. This was generally stated to be for special offer announcements and mailing list, as well as to help with the order any just shy of 100% of users took the option of a 10% prior to actually deciding to pay.

Wow amazing I'm hearing you say.

OK well we ran on a drop out rate of about 80% of our carts before doing anything to try and capture those lost soles. So as part of solving that we problem we did this, starting off buy emailing back failed orders with a reminder, we started to remove any lots completed carts. Then to maximise on this we emailed twice, second time with a discount of 25%, better still. Then epiphany moment, we added the 10% discount for email on the basket before ever entering any details and we ended reclaiming a huge chunk of those lost carts, as we could then email a reminder and then 25% discount 72 hours later to people who had only priced up the goods without even trying to purchase.

Bonza.

Hope this helps anyone whos having difficulties with lost carts.

D

 

[DavidHorn]

Sillyjokes - do you ever buy anything from Amazon? If so, you have an account with them. A combination of their servers and your browser remembers your password for you. Really - is it such a big deal?

I agree that if you have to login to your account in order to add items to your basket then sure, it's a pain and just plain wrong - people won't do it, nor should they have to.

But, if I'm remembered when I return, I don't have to re-enter my billing information, my delivery information, and whatever other delivery options I've specified - surely that's a good thing? If you'd rather re-enter all of that stuff, rather than have the site create an account for you I think you'll be really limited by what sites you shop at. (You can rule out amazon, dabs.com, ebuyer, pixmania, etc. etc.)

 

[makeupqueen]

Thats tru actually. I get sick of having to input name address etc. Ok the remembering of a password is apian, but if you have a home computer - how about the "remember me on this computer" bit!

 

[SillyJokes]

David, I buy stuff from Amazon all the time.

If you re read my post you will notice the penultimate paragraph

Setting up an account always sucks for small sites.

Reasons?

It sounds like you are asking for more information than the wary customer is prepared to give.

It is an extra hoop for them to jump through.

When they return (if they return) they have to remember a poxy password just to shop so often the customer just uses the same password for all shops, compromising their security.

It's just plain arrogant to imagine that anyone thinks so much of your shop that they would willingly want to sign away their personal details to you.

It's frustrating to have spent time shopping and then be asked for information you don't want to give.

Having said all this.....

It's not always a bad thing to register with a store but you have to have a really great reason for people to come back to you regularly. On some sites it is fabulous, like Amazon, Tesco and John Lewis. It means you don't even have to get your credit card out to quicly place that rather onerous order.
But a little store which someone may never want to shop from again - it's absolute bobbins

At SillyJokes customers can choose to have their details (but not their card numbers) remembered by ticking a box. The limit to this is that they have to come back on the same computer they first visited on.

 

[DavidHorn]

Apologies Silly Jokes - and I take your point.

If I was a store owner though I wouldn't want to have the mentality that I was "a little store that someone might never want to shop from again" - I'd want to have the mentality that the best customer is a repeat customer - not least because the cost per acquisition for that customer keeps coming down and down and down ... so if I can - in any way - make it easier for people to become repeat customers - by storing information, and not making them re-enter billing details, then I'd be doing that.

If the only extra piece of information needed to create the account is a password, and I'm only going to use the site once, surely it doesn't matter if I can't remember that password later?

David

 

[UCSharon]

This is interesting stuff. The process makeupqueen mentions is exactly hoe OSCommerce operates. We've just re-written an ecommerce site based on OSCommerce for www.porta-charge.co.uk and kept this 'feature'.

I'll have to look at a way of re-doing this without calling it an 'account'

Hi, hope you don't mind me asking, you say you kept this feature on oscommerce-does that mean you (as a web designer, not the customer) can actually get rid of it and oscommerce will still work?

Sharon

 

[DuaneJackson]

Our system isn't OSCommerce. The clients original site was and they wanted to keep the same look and feel - it was mainly SEO and back end stuff that was changed.

But yes, this can be removed, or atleast changed so that you still take details and create an 'account' in the background, but as far as the user is concerned they are just providing standard delivery and billing info.

 

[makeupqueen]

OS has a contribution called PWA (purchase without account) that you can install so that a customer doesnt have to have an account to buy from you

 

[Spire]

Hi

I don't like having to create an account for buying on the net, and the so called free downloads etc that require the size of your shoes before they will let u have the download can get lost as far as I am concerned I just do not bother.

I am just building my own e-commerce site and the way I have decided to do it, is that the customer will have the option weather or not they want to create an account, if they choose not to create an account I am just asking for an email addreess for contact purposes until the order is filled, then after a period of time which I have not decided upon yet I will destroy the record of their email address.

The advantage to the customer of creating an account is that they would be able to track their order progress, receivie a newsletter if they choose the newsletter option, and not have to fill in their details again when then return.

And of course if they do not create an account the oposite to the advantges above.

The creation of the account will be done just before payment is made, so the customer will know what the cost is going to be before they have to create an account, or provide an email address.

I hope that this will accomodate as many people as possible and those that do not want to create an account, I can still keep upto date on order progress thru there email address.