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The Fight Against Shopping Cart Abandonment
Liberty Fillmore is a man with a purpose.
He’s no hero. No, sir. Just an ordinary guy placed in extraordinary circumstances.
His mission: End the plight of abandoned shopping carts everywhere.
Fillmore has a natural talent for saving carts. He was born to do it. He is… The Cart Whisperer.
. . . everywhere I go, I see shopping carts tossed aside. Cast off. Abandoned. In super-value-store parking lots. And, more and more, on the interweb which is online. People say, “I’m all gonna fill up my shopping cart with things,” and then before they hit the BUY button, they say, “Oh, I don’t feel secure. I ain’t buying this stuff here.”
Well, boo hoo, cowards. How do you think that cart fills? Left there, full up and then abandoned before she can fulfill her cartly duties? Well, that’s why I rescue abandoned carts. And why I welcome the support of VeriSign and their EV SSL Product Thing. Join our ranks, and put your cart abandonment issues to rest.
How do you think that cart fills, indeed. Won’t somebody please think of the carts!?
Cart Awareness Starts at Home
Now, before you go door-to-door petitioning for cart awareness, you should know that — although we wish he were — The Cart Whisperer ain’t a real guy. No, ma’am. What we have here is a clever viral marketing campaign from VeriSign.
Let’s take a peek at a day in the life of Liberty….
According to VeriSign:
The … campaign is aimed at highlighting the pain companies experience as they try to understand why consumers fill online shopping carts, only to abandon them before buying. In the face of an uncertain economy, online retailers are clamoring to find ways to turn shoppers into buyers. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues lost to abandoned carts.
From a branding perspective, this works — assuming that people actually end up going to NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com (otherwise, they’d have no idea VeriSign was behind it). At the moment, though, over 1 million people have seen “The Cart Whisperer” clip.
Only time will tell whether this campaign boosts VeriSign’s bottom line, but it sure does its part to spread cart awareness.
On our mark. Get set. Trust us!
Trustmark logos are helpful, but they’re not the whole answer. If you think adding a trustmark to your e-commerce shop is enough to “end the plight of cart abandonment,” think again. (Sorry, Liberty, but ya cain’t save ‘em all by yer self.)
Trustmarks can boost conversion rates and lower cart abandonment to a degree, but there are many other ways to build trust. Here are three:
• Simplify your privacy statement Roughly 75% of consumers assume that, as long as a site has a privacy policy, it won’t share data with third parties. Not only should you have a privacy policy, it should be clear and concise (e.g., “We value your privacy,” “We will not share your personal information — ever”). Try putting a clear statement like that next to your “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” calls to action and test whether it improves conversion.
• Get a decent “About Us” page. It’s amazing how few small e-tailers make the “About Us” page a priority. If your brand’s logo isn’t trustmark enough, customers need to know more about who you are if they’re going to be comfortable giving you money.
• Optimize your shopping cart. Don’t blame Liberty Fillmore for an 80% abandonment rate. It’s possible you’re not giving would-be customers enough information. Do visitors need to click “Add to Cart” to see your pricing and shipping rates? If so, maybe your cart abandonment rate is misleading. Maybe it’s time to learn a few tricks from Amazon.
Godspeed, Liberty Fillmore. Your noble quest is our own.
. .
Shopping cart lonely? Gonna be in New York on June 3rd? Want to become a cart whisperer?
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March 20th, 2008
2:15 pm
Hi Robert,
Great post- and I’ve got a question for you. What do you think is the percentage of shopping carts that are abandoned because of the ‘trust’ factor- versus the percentage of carts that are abandoned simply because that’s how the customer is figuring out information?
For instance, I’ve abandoned more than one cart not because I didn’t trust the vendor, but because:
- it was the only way I could figure out the shipping charges/options.
- it was the equivalent of picking an item up in a store and considering: “Do I really want this?” The sales page didn’t give me a way to just contemplate the whole thing at once.
- pyschological factors related to the above, where I just wanted to see what it was like to maybe purchase it, and then decided I didn’t need it.
In those instances, there is very little the vendor could’ve done to keep me from abandoning the cart. But, they could’ve created a situation where I had what I needed -before- I got into the shopping cart. And it would’ve left me with a more pleasant experience.
Anyway- interested in your thoughts on this, if you care to share.
April 16th, 2008
10:21 am
Hi Robert,
Mine is a small but niche website. I am using Paypal Shopping cart, which takes users away from website when they click BUY NOW or ADD TO CART. I am not sure how I can track how many people abandon the shopping cart, as they leave website once they click BUY NOW.
April 16th, 2008
12:11 pm
That happens a lot. There’s at least 3 diff’t solutions to tracking this, none of them really satisfying and all differing in complexity. Since, as you say, you’ve a small niche site, I’d go with something relatively straight-forward and simple:
1) treat the last page they are on your site as the Conversion Point (I’m using Persuasion Architecture terminology for this; you can easily look up definitions for this online). The entire scenario you’d be measuring for the customer would end at this point
2) treat the page that customers come back to your site from PayPal as the start of a new scenario (it’ll be short, naturally)
3) measure the two separately and make an assumption (albeit not a half-bad one when the alternative is no measurement at all) that in the aggregate a specific customer acts like a typical customer and therefore how people complete the scenario in (1) above *on average* will correspond to how people complete the scenario in (2) above *on average*.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start
Now, if you have access to a medium skilled programmer what I’d also strongly suggest is that on the final step of (1) you set a specific cookie, separate from any other cookies you’re using on the site. Perhaps call it the “paypal” cookie
All it needs to contain is some sort of unique ID for the transaction — you don’t have to link it directly to “Mary Smith’s” transaction but you do need to give Mary Smith a unique value for this cookie. For illustration purposes let’s give it a value “123-ABC” – obviosuly something unique will have a lot more characters in it.
Again it is to identify this transaction specifically not Mary Smith generally.
Then, at the start of scenario (2), read the cookie, and embed it into this second scenario. That way you’ll be able to go back with your analytics program and match these two scenarios together. (one too simple way might be to just throw the value of the cookie onto the URL and then let Google Analytics look for similar URL values to unite the two click paths).
Again, this too isn’t perfect, but the act of doing it will unveil new ideas and thoughts to you for how to better measure this. And hopefully you’ll get a bit of a conversion tweak, enough to pay to transition off the PayPal system
May 6th, 2008
9:04 pm
That is some very creative advertising from Verisign thanks Robert. Simplifying the Privacy Statement was a great tip.
November 18th, 2008
9:19 am
Hi Robert,
I have worked a lot on finding ways to protect my customers from thinking about abandoning carts. One simple thing I have done is to implement a page which takes up their contact information and complete order details before they go to the payment page. By doing this, when any of my customers do not pay on payment page, an email is automatically sent to them offering them a direct link to their cart, which they can again checkout within no time.
I find that very effective tool, and most of the missed leads convert to sales after I have implemented this.
January 7th, 2009
4:26 pm
I found your site because I was looking for blogs to promote the short film I produced and co-directed about a man in Los Angeles who takes photos of shopping carts!
out: http://www.docchallenge.org/Art/city-of-lost- carts.html. 12
February 3rd, 2009
6:21 pm
[...] Future Now: The fight against shopping cart abandonment: http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/03/05/verisign-cart-whisperer-campaign/ [...]
July 30th, 2009
3:38 am
Your work is great Robert especially simplifying the Privacy Statement was a great tip,I congrats you.
September 13th, 2009
4:44 pm
Yes, I agree. This is a great articles. My regard – Game Online
September 23rd, 2009
6:35 am
The statement regarding privacy policy is very important. Consumers want clear and easy information and with huge privacy policy documents that require you to click away from the screen you are on in many cases will just put the customer off from the start. Talking to the people in a genuine statement is really important as well more convincing.
October 6th, 2009
12:41 pm
That’s very true. The privacy policy page is so important. Without it, many customers would get away from your cart.
October 6th, 2009
1:01 pm
I made a short documentary about real abandoned shopping carts and a man who photographs them!
It is interesting to note that shopping carts in the offline world are abandoned AFTER the goods have been purchased!
October 7th, 2009
10:20 pm
Yes, I agree. This is a great articles. My regard
October 23rd, 2009
10:25 am
Yes, I agree. This is a great articles and thank you for your sharing.
October 23rd, 2009
9:59 pm
Your idea is the main point. i agree and thanks a lot..
October 24th, 2009
4:27 am
That’s very true. The privacy policy page is most important. i agree on your idea. Thank you for sharing.
October 24th, 2009
2:29 pm
Thank you Robert.
This is good advertising from Verisign.
October 24th, 2009
3:12 pm
what a good idea to simplify the privacy statement, i agree totally with you.
good post
November 4th, 2009
2:55 pm
That is some very creative advertising from Verisign thanks Robert. Simplifying the Privacy Statement was a great tip.