New PayPal Tools Help Reduce Abadoned Carts

In a recent article I wrote titled 10 Proven Methods to Decrease Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate I detailed a number of strategies you could use to reduce your cart abandon rates.

If you use PayPal as a payment method, and depending on the technical ability of your cart, you might have had trouble with abandon carts in the past. However a recent survey conducted by comscore on behalf of PayPal aimed to answer the question why shoppers abandon their carts.

The survey revealed that largest single reason online shoppers abandoned their carts was due to high shipping costs. Additional factors were security concerns and check-out processes that lacked convenience.

The survey also found that if merchants had provided shipping costs upfront, this might have persuaded 40 percent of participants to complete the purchase.

As a result of the survey findings, PayPal recently released the PayPal Instant Update API — a new Express Checkout feature.

The Instant Update API enables merchants to provide customers with the critical information they need — when they need it — in order to make the purchase.

Merchants who integrate the new API, can now show order details which include shipping options, insurance choices and tax totals, earlier in the check-out process.

Customers will still pay on your site when using Express Checkout; however, with the new tools they do not need to reenter shipping, billing, or payment information because the information is already available from PayPal. This helps merchants offer a more simplified checkout process while providing customers with what they are looking for.

Additional Reasons Shoppers Abandoned Carts

A comprehensive list of the most frequent reasons why shoppers abandoned their carts is below.

• High shipping charges: 46 percent
• Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent
• Lack of money: 36 percent
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent
• Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent
• Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent
• Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent

If you are looking for more information on the PayPal Instant Update API you can read about implementing it using any of these links:

Implementing the Instant Update API

The PayPal Blog

10 Proven Methods to Decrease Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Moving customers through the checkout process effectively is a critical element toward closing any sale online. Providing your customers choose to order directly from your website rather than over the phone, the information you present to them during checkout is ultimately what will help them decide whether or not to complete the purchase.

Throughout this process you will need to continually reassure them, providing them with the necessary elements essential to developing trust and security. These elements are commonly called customer assurances. Their job is making the customer feel comfortable enough to complete the intended action (i.e. buying your product.)

Cart abandonment is a problem that all eCommerce sites see in some degree. The rate at which your visitors abandon depends on how effective you have structured the checkout process. Shopping cart abandonment is an important statistic that needs to be tracked as it could mean the difference between a profitable eCommerce store and a potential loss.

According to industry publications, average shopping cart abandonment rates are between 60% – 70%. Put in to sample numbers, if you have 100 people start the checkout process and 65% abandon it, you just lost 65 sales. To take that further, if your average order value is $49 you lost $3185 in revenue.

To further demonstrate the hit your business just took, not only have you lost revenue but you lost 65 potential new customers as well. This translates to an undeterminable amount of future recurring revenue through repeat orders.

Many factors that contribute to cart abandonment are out of the merchant’s control; however there are a number of factors you can concentrate on that will help reduce the overall effect on your store.

1. From a technical perspective, make sure your cart is working properly and is free of bugs. As elementary as this may sound, it is a vital component that often is not given the weight it deserves. Simple logic tells us that if a cart is not working correctly it will prevent a customer from being able to order. To alleviate this potential problem you should go through your order process and ensure it is free of bugs and works as you expect. It would be a good idea to also have others go through and test it periodically – especially after any updates to code or structure have been made that involve the checkout process.

2. Keep your pricing competitive. Customers are also shoppers. What I mean is they are always searching for and comparing similar products prices. Unless your product is totally 100% unique and not easily duplicated, you must be aware of the price you assign to it. With the increase use in shopping comparison sites by consumers and in light of the current state of the economy, competitive pricing is more critical than ever. If your prices are out of the ball park your customers won’t stay to watch the game.

3. Decrease the steps in your checkout process. If your cart has the ability for a one page checkout that is fantastic. However, if you don’t have that luxury, don’t worry. Test have shown that shorter checkout processes which aren’t one page only work just fine to convert visitors into sales providing a few elements are met. A good rule of thumb to follow here is to combine logical steps during the checkout process (shipping and billing address information as an example) and eliminate any extra steps. If you can get your checkout process down to four steps or less you’ll be ok in most cases.

4. Add process indicators to checkout procedure. You don’t want a customer to wonder how much longer it will take to checkout or what part of that checkout process they are in. This is an easy fix. Simply adding process indicators in a graphic format near the top of the checkout process will help keep customers in the checkout until the end.

5. Clearly provide proper customer points of assurance at the right locations. There is one word which makes customers buy and that word is “trust.” Customer points of assurance provide information to the end user which build trust and answer questions. Things like security seals, customer service phone numbers, live chat, and privacy policy are examples of a few customer points of assurance. These should be displayed and easily seen especially at times when you are asking the customer to act.

6. Clearly display your security and trust seals. Customers want to ensure the information they submit during an order is secure and protected. Make sure you clearly and plainly tell them that their transaction is secure and show them the seal to prove it. Don’t hide the seal at the bottom of a page or make it hard to find. Tests have shown that adding a security seal within the user eye flow at critical times during checkout can improve conversion.

7. Offer multiple payment methods including PayPal. Offering multiple payment methods opens up the number of people who will do business with you. Customers like to choice and control. Providing them with the choice of multiple payment methods in addition to PayPal will help keep them in the checkout process. In fact, 1 in 3 shoppers expect to be able to pay with PayPal or at least be given that option in addition to other methods.

8. Enable customers to order over the telephone if desired. No matter how perfect a site is, there are going to be customers that prefer to complete their order over the phone. Whether they start the checkout process and have a question that needs to be answered or simply don’t feel comfortable providing their personal information over the internet, you must give them the ability to call you to complete the transaction. Placing a customer service phone number in a clearly visible location with the text “Prefer to order by phone?” will help decrease cart abandonment.

9. Clearly state return and shipping policies. In survey after survey, shoppers say one of the big reasons they abandon the checkout process is due to the shipping charge or return options. Many sites don’t provide the shipping and return information to the customer until they are in step two or three of the checkout process. If the information they find there does not appeal to them they will leave. You can prevent this by offering them the shipping and return information at the first step of the checkout process or better yet from the page they are viewing their shopping cart from.

10. Don’t require registration to checkout. This is difficult for some stores to implement because of the architecture their cart is built upon. However, if you have the ability to offer what is often called a “guest checkout” feature you should do so. For privacy reasons, there are a number of people out there who do not want the information they provide you with saved and it is those people who will leave unless you provide them with an option to checkout without registering.

Following these principles will not completely eliminate shopping cart abandonment at your site but it should help in reducing it to a more reasonable level thus increasing sales.

Keeping Customers in the Checkout Process

Moving customers through the checkout process effectively is a critical element toward closing any sale.

Throughout this process you will need to continually provide them with the necessary elements which ensure they feel comfortable enough to complete the action (i.e. buy your product.)

Checkout abandonment is a problem that all ecommerce sites see in some degree. The rate at which your visitors abandon depends on how effective you have structured the process. Once you get them started on it they may leave, but you don’t have to make it easy on them to do so. Some site owners are doing just that.

The Problem Revealed

There is an inherent problem I have seen on a number of ecommerce sites who’s owners attempt to provide their customers with the “right information” at the “right time” with the hopes of persuading them to complete the checkout. These sites oftentimes do a good job of placing the elements but fail in one other important area — how they present the information the element leads to.

The way this information is presented can either help or negate to some degree the intended effect. In the examples I have seen, the sites present the user with a hyperlink element linking them to a point of customer assurance which resides on a new page within the site. This can be a link to the shipping rate schedule, a guarantee, contact information, or more.

However, the way these sites have implemented the elements actually ends up taking the visitor further away from the checkout process — not what you want if you are trying to close a sale and win over a customer.

Implementation

For the past several months I’ve been testing the two methods against each other. One method uses hyperlink elements that “feed” customer assurance information to the visitor via a link to a new page, and the other feeds customer assurance information via a non-blockable DHTML hover box. The results were not surprising.

The method which utilized the DHTML hover over boxes had a positive increase on the website conversion in the areas it was utilized. In contrast, in instances where the information was fed to the user via links to other pages on the site (taking them away from the checkout process), the abandonment rates were higher and the conversion lower.

When asked, users attributed their abandonment to confusion relating to “how to get back into the checkout process” at the exact point they were at when they left it to view the “assurance” information.

Below are two screenshots. Figure 1 shows the typical way I saw this method utilized on sites; with hyperlinks that took the user out to other pages in order to get the information they sought. Figure 2 shows the after effect using the more effective DHTML hover over box which gives the end user what they seek without taking them away from the checkout process.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Others have tried to circumvent the misfortune of leading users away from the checkout process by providing the information in a traditional “pop-up” window. Not a bad idea, but still not the best. Why? Because with the many pop-up blockers built into browsers now, these clicks may only frustrate them again.

The answer is to provide the information to them in a non-blockable DHTML hover over type window. You can even set these up to activate “on mouse over” if you wish which will present the information simply by hovering a mouse over the link.

You’ve now got yet one more tool to use in your quest for increased conversion. Use it wisely and you will be rewarded.

To your continued success.

eCommerce Strategy Enables Higher Recovery of Abandoned Carts

Abandoned shopping carts and eCommerce all to often go hand in hand.

Let’s face it, if you own an ecommerce site, you can expect to have some sort of abandoned cart rate. That does not mean you have to accept that abandonment rate though. You can (and should) implement strategies to recover some of those potential lost sales. If you are not doing anything to try to recover them, then you need to think about starting.

A cart is considered abandoned when a potential customer adds items to their cart, starts the checkout process, but fails to complete that process.

After testing various strategies for one site, I found a mix that yielded a 51% recovery rate of previously abandoned carts. In addition to the carts that were recovered, we were able to gather superior feedback on why others did not elect to complete their purchase.

Using this information, we were able to make further adjustments to the site that reduced future cart abandons and helped increase conversion.

According to industry reports, the average abandoned cart rate for ecommerce sites ranges between 55% and 70%. Many of those visitors abandon at different places, with most coming during the checkout process itself. Recovering a portion of those abandoned carts can add sales to your bottom line that would have normally been lost.

There are all kinds of reasons why a user may abandon the shopping process including:

• Poor site design
• Lack of direction and communication
• Confusion
• Lack of proper customer assurances
• Site credibility
• Distraction
• and more…

Recovering Carts: Finding The Right Mix

When crafting solutions that attempt to recover sales from abandoned carts, you should test various tactics to find the right mix that works for your site. What works for one market may not necessarily work for others. Generalities may be present that can be implemented across multiple markets, however, it will come down to how each demographic responds to your message that will ultimately determine which tactic or tactics work best for your store.

I found that through my testing, the best mix was to send an email within 2 – 4 hours after the cart was abandoned. I wanted to try to recover the sale while the initial transaction was still fresh in their mind

In the “From” section of the email I used the name of the website. In the subject line I used the following text: “Question about your recent shopping experience with us.” The body of the email included the items that were in their shopping cart when they abandoned, asked them to help by telling us why they abandoned the cart, and reminded them that since the cart was saved, they could quickly and easily complete their purchase by coming back to the site.

Ideas on Where to Start

Depending on the technology implemented, eCommerce store owners fall into one of two boats when it comes to cart recovery. Those that have the ability to track and contact visitors who have abandoned their cart, and those that don’t have the technology in place to do this.

Either way, here are a few thoughts on what you can do to generate more sales no matter what your technology allows.

1. If your ecommerce technology has a cart recovery system in place (one that allows you to see those users and contact them) use it. Test various time frames and copy for sending email reminders. Try different subject lines, various offers and incentives for recovering and closing the sale. Equally important is to listen to those that respond to you with reasons why they did not complete the process. Use that information to make the needed adjustments on your site to avoid future abandons for that same reason.
2. If you do not have a program in place that allows you to see and contact those users who have abandoned their carts, but you know they are abandoning, then start with your analytics. Find the main areas these users are leaving and address those pages first. Look for problems with design, wording, presence of customer assurances, etc…

   Where your site lacks them, add them. You may not be able to recover those carts who have abandoned already, but you may be able to reduce the number of future abandons by making the proper changes to avoid it before it happens.