Forum Moderators: buckworks
1. Shoppers that have added items to their cart and then drop out before hitting the "checkout" button...
2. Shoppers that drop out after hitting the "checkout" button...
Are there any good places to find this information?
I see a whole lot of people here saying, "Well, I wouldn't (or would) do this or that" In reality, seeing as we are all web savvy people here, that doesn't hold a whole lot of value.
When designing a web process, be it checkout, registration or whatever, you should A) be aiming for the lowest common denominator and B) set up some sort of usibility study.
When we do a study here, we pull a few people out of the warehouse and put them on a computer. We actually look for those who don't have a computer at home. Find non-computer users and see what their reactions are to the design(s) you have in mind. If they can't figure it out or don't like it because it's too much work, chances are your average customer will feel the same way.
Been an online shopper for 5 years, and usually when sites do this (based on my past experience), I know they are going to have rediculous shipping charges.
Seems most other people feel the same way.
If you're going to inconvience me, your potential customer, you'd better have a product that I can't buy anyone else.
But as a consumer, why SHOULDN'T I abandon a cart? It's not as if it contains a box of ice cream that is going to melt all over the supermarket floor. I'll stick an item in there if I want to be able to find it again easily, or if I want to know the shipping charges, or if it's an impulse item that I may forget about.
My wish list:
1. A more in-your-face way of keeping the shopper constantly aware of how to get to the cart and what is currently in it.
2. I hate user id's and passwords. Don't bog me down with that and don't questionnaire me about details that are not relevant to this purchase. I WANT to tell you my name, address, phone #, email, and credit card number, so just get out the way and let me.
- CompWorld
also agoracart, the cart I mostly use, uses cookies instead of login id and password
both are FREE!
[edited by: TallTroll at 10:45 am (utc) on Nov. 11, 2003]
Anybody have any success stories with this? Any numbers to share?
But as a consumer, why SHOULDN'T I abandon a cart? It's not as if it contains a box of ice cream that is going to melt all over the supermarket floor.
I left a cart once, actually 2 of them. I had corrected the cashier twice about mischarges, after the 3rd I let her go on. When she finished I told her I wasn't buying anything in that store as long as the cashiers couldn't add. Two carts of groceries, with ice cream.
Back on topic. I'm in a niche, and the general feeling is that customers who find my site are already predisposed to purchasing my product. Not always, my logs reveal that. I haven't bothered to sort it all all out and crunch the numbers.
This thread has at least made me look at my own checkout, and well, I think I could make a sale to HarryM. Looks like my biggest problem could be the rigamarole you have to go thru to set up shipping charges. I'll bet - I can find a user who was in my cart for more than 5 minutes and I didn't get sale - that user got lost in my shipping set up.
I'd think a good look at my logs would reveal something. I can see when they go into my cart, check the time they were there, and check to see if I got a sale from the same IP address. A short trip to the cart, with no sale, and repeated many time by many visitors could be saying "People don't like that page". That brings up the question, what's the average checkout time, from first name to approved... 3 minutes? Some pretty detail logging and analysis would be needed to calculate the rate of abandonment.
<putting pennies down now>
1. Drop out rate for customers who add items to thier cart and then leave (before hitting the checkout button)
2. Drop out rate for customers who add items and then hit the checkout button before leaving...
