Forum Moderators: buckworks
I lose the other 20% on shipping calculation, so thats not entirely bad (Was much worse before estimates were obvious on the product detail pages)
So basically my success rate is only 16.2% on my funnel tracking - so my cart abandonment is roughly 83.8%. Thats crazy.
If 58% of my cart abandonment is merely people not wanting to login i find that absurd.
How does it hold on your sites? We used to allow anonymous purchase on our old platform but it made for a terrible support nightmare from order management & customer support side. We weren't really getting great funnel analytics on that system either since the process wasn't standardized through a single purchase workflow like it is now.
My business is doing well, but i'm surprised how much abandonment there is during login.
as a programmer, i cant see the need to 'Force' this upon users, after all, al shipping/billing information is stored anyway when a customer checks out.
the only benefit for customer registration is that you can offer them benefits, money off, etc.
My checkout process has 4 stages
1)Billing and shipping address entry, simple clear, screen is not cluttered. Underneath you are shown a basket breakdown, (the item, its attributes, its cost, and the total cost of your order so far including vat)
The shipping value shows "Select Shipping Cost on next Screen" (shipping values are also shown on a seperate information page)
2)Shipping screen / coupon screen. based upon what the customer entered in their shipping address, shipping is automatically selected for the country/area of the world.
Basket breakdown still shows underneath, but now includes shipping cost, total is updated as necessary for shipping type and discount codes on the screen.
3)Payment selection screen (sends off to a choice of payment providers, all address/detail parameters passed through too.)
4)order complete.
customer isn't forced to register, and is kept up to date with exactly how much their shop costs at all stages.
i like it anyway.
Basically I prefer no account.
- For tracking: give me a link.
- For RMA: give me a code together with the product I can enter on a provided URL
Send me spam and we'll never do business again.
You will learn a lot...
It matters not a jot what you think yourself. If you want to sell online do so using the methods that the customers want not what you think they should have. ;)
= The smartest thing said in this thread.
Having someone create a login and password is in no way a security feature that prevents you from being hit with fraud.
Its your call though.
So you don't see any value add in allowing customers to track products online, re-order with a single page checkout, confirm shipments, do returns/RMA and customer service online, print out receipts, track PO's and all that stuff?
I used to let customers do these things with a minimum of their email address plus the order number which nobody else would know. For better customer confirmation you could ask for the last 4 digits of the credit card used.
If you must create an account use the email address as the login and ask people AFTER they purchase to enter a password if they want to come back and check their order status, etc.
So you don't see any value add in allowing customers to track products online, re-order with a single page checkout, confirm shipments, do returns/RMA and customer service online, print out receipts, track PO's and all that stuff?
No, I don't, and there's a very simple reason: if I need these features (which I probably will not) I'll pick up the telephone and call your 800 number. Why should I take my precious time to navigate your online customer service features when I can dump my problems on a real human? No 800 number? I'm gone.
As for the login process, I never forget that the Google serps page I just left to visit your site is only a few clicks back... even easier if I use my G toolbar. And all your competitors are right there, waiting.
When I leave your site, its under a cloud of iritation. I'll never come back unless you are the only possible source for something I truly need.
IMO, you're loosing much, much more business than you realize.
I'll pick up the telephone and call your 800 number.
That's just inefficient for all involved.
Asking about pre-sale product information on the 800# is good.
Making someone sit and spell out a 16 digit tracking number post-sle is BAD for everyone.
That person sitting there doing what you could easily access from the site is costing the employer money needlessly and most likely driving up labor costs passed on in the future product prices. The more people that abuse the 800# the more employees needed and the higher the prices go until they are priced out of business and you won't be able to buy it whatsoever.
Like I said earlier, I'm not a fan of account creation just because my email address and order tracking number should be enough, or my email address and a password worse case.
For users who come in uncookied or who do not log in - Make them fill in everything (billing, shipping address, CC number, name, phone etc) and then click submit, then, and only then, on a separate screen do you ask them to provide a password. Do not mention logging in anywhere in the purchase process. The idea here is that, by the time you ask them to log in, they've invested so much time into the order that they won't abandon it just because they have to log in.
Yes, it's evil, but it works. As I also said, I hate having to log in myself.
Best solution just to create accounts on the fly if you want them to have an account, and drop them a line telling them that for their convenience, you have stored the order details and they can access it with email & and stron server-generated password. When they log back in, ask them for further details.
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No, I don't, and there's a very simple reason: if I need these features (which I probably will not) I'll pick up the telephone and call your 800 number. Why should I take my precious time to navigate your online customer service features when I can dump my problems on a real human? No 800 number? I'm gone.
I don't buy it ;)
You're telling me with a straight face that when you shop online you would rather get on the phone and deal with people than be able to look up info however/whenever you want?
Seems to me you have login-a-phobia and would be better off going to your local store and paying full retail.
1. Account set-up processes that require a dozen or two of inputs, and then inform me that my user or password failed for something like not enough characters, previous user, etc. If I want to order, I must go through the whole process again.
2. Customer service features (to deal with my question, shipment, etc) that are absolutly awful to try to find on the store's website. Why wouldn't I just pick up the phone, its right next to my computer?
3. Like the above, but the "service" features simply aren't there, even though they are implied in the admin-your-account section. You should try using my natural gas utility's website.
4. And, as has been mentioned in many comments here already, why should I do this to place one simple order?
I'm not saying the phone is an ideal answer. All too often it just results in a long phone tree and miserable waits for a real person.
In my experience the worst avenue is contacting a store by email. Its rare that someone responds promptly, and with a real answer.
I know I'm griping a lot. I run two e-com sites with no registration, no log-in; and get heated when I have to jump through hoops as a customer.
ByronM,
If I have a phobia, I caught it from repeated instances like these:
Experience counts and i've had much worse experience by shopping at places that don't have any online account/login functionality - MAKING me call a phone that is never answered or email people that never respond.
1. Account set-up processes that require a dozen or two of inputs, and then inform me that my user or password failed for something like not enough characters, previous user, etc. If I want to order, I must go through the whole process again.
We don't do any of that. Your login id is your email address and you would have to enter your email address to make a purchase anyway. Your password *SHOULD* be complex for your own protection anyway :)
2. Customer service features (to deal with my question, shipment, etc) that are absolutly awful to try to find on the store's website. Why wouldn't I just pick up the phone, its right next to my computer?
You must shop at terrible sites. When you login one of the main menu options is to track packages.
When you use the phone, did you not already spend a few minutes trying to look it up yourself and get upset because its not terribly easy to fine? Mind you we also email the tracking numbers but if you're not able to check your email (firewalled at work because its a free email or whatever) most people can remember the email address they used and a password they're familiar with more so than which credit card they may have used, an order id number, or some other identification to prove who you are.
3. Like the above, but the "service" features simply aren't there, even though they are implied in the admin-your-account section. You should try using my natural gas utility's website.
Well, the website may be non-intuitive but i can almost guarantee it still takes you less time to find what you need on the website than calling your utilities support. You have to find out the support number, your account number or other details anyway and call when they're open to begin with!
4. And, as has been mentioned in many comments here already, why should I do this to place one simple order?
One simple order isn't what i'm targeting for. If all you want is to shop once for something cheap/simple its going to cost me money to sell to you unless its an extremely high margin thing and even THEN its probably not profitable because you have to sell volume that you won't get unless you get repeatable customers in which case login in makes an easier/better experience because its less prone to error.
I'm not saying the phone is an ideal answer. All too often it just results in a long phone tree and miserable waits for a real person.In my experience the worst avenue is contacting a store by email. Its rare that someone responds promptly, and with a real answer.
Boy howdy i wish the rest didn't screw it up for you. We answer most emails within 30 seconds of getting them because its so terribly easy to do its not even funny.
Phone typically takes us 25-30 minutes PER call because its so repetitive. "please repeat your 12 digit order number" "your item has shipped the tracking number is 189374937923749237497293472987349273489324 via fedex.
I know I'm griping a lot. I run two e-com sites with no registration, no log-in; and get heated when I have to jump through hoops as a customer.
I don't think logging in adds any hoops. I'm not talking about a poorly designed sites heavy with captchas and other difficult to login sites - i'm talking about amazon.com style logins where its part of the process and in part of using that process you have everything you need at your hands to manage the order/cancel it/track it and or return it whenever/however you wish.
Its rare that someone responds promptly, and with a real answer.
Sometimes email is the most efficient and smartest way to proceed. Sometimes a phone call eliminates a lot of hoops and cuts out a lot of BS. One can get to the salient point much more easily. I use both extensively.
The bigger the company, the higher the cost of providing service, and the more they go out of their way to avoid providing it - by phone, email - they avoid it all. True with my cell provider, true with my ISP/cable provider, true with most of the big players that I 'have' to do business with. Another reason that I like the small players where possible. They need me. They want my business. I'm not especially demanding if I feel that my problem is being taken seriously and I'm getting some progress feedback.
There is a tipping point on customer service, and it is something that I personally struggle with daily. Nothing is more valuable or irreplaceable than time. Give the customer great service and you own them for life - but this brings me right back to streamlining operations to prevent the majority of potential problems, and then to fix those at arise in big chunks - not one customer at a time.
I was recently privy (not my problem thankfully) to the rollout of an inadequately tested product - which had significant problems from the start. The easiest course would have been to recall/refund/promise-to-replace. Handle the entire database associated with the purchase of that particular product in one shot. Bite the bullet once. Wow 'em with integrity. Instead, the product was pulled, but the defective product was left out there; figuring many customers would just 'take it', or not realize what junk it was. The complaints poured in. Each one had to be dealt with, one by one, and mostly they just got a raw deal. Wherever possible, the customer was hung with the loss with a no-answer answer. This is a small niche and bad news is traveling fast. By the time the issue is dealt with, the product reputation may already be poisoned. How long, and at what cost, will it take to repair the damage? The smaller players can't survive doing business this way; another plus for the big fish in the small pond IMO.
It's also a fact of life that forcing a login/registration, will get you less by the way of sales ... every single time.
Two clients ...
One forces login, while the other does not.
After two years, the one who forced login complained about the number of abandoned carts he had.
He didn't start seeing any kind of substantial returns until he did away with his silly forced login.
Now he's happy ... he's making money.
You don't have to force login to track customers, that is, unless you are running a 90's version cart software solution.
Most cart systems will tell you "all you need to know" about your customers. You know who they are, and surprisingly enough, they know who they are, so maintaining a database with redundant info you are both going to know is rather pointless.
If someone calls you on the product? Well, then all you have to do is login to your admin backend, look up their name and purchase ID, and BooYa, it's a done deal ... no account creation required.
People don't like to be forced into doing anything ... especially creating internet accounts at stores they may not frequent but only once or twice.
Registering or otherwise creating an account at even Amazon will get you more spam than you'll ever need, because everybody has partners, or clean lists to sell if they don't.
If you have a cart solution that's worth it's salt, then your customers who choose not to register will not be anonymous when making their purchase.
Customers that don't create accounts have printers and credit card statements to keep them happy and on track. The logging in portion of your business should only be presented as a "convenience" to your customer and nothing else.
If you really feel the need to make money online, then making your registration optional should be the order of the day.
The only time I would suggest any form of account creation would be if you were to sell a service, like hosting, or voip or something of that sort that auto-bills recurring once a month. Then, through the account, your client can login to print out his monthly statement, or to make a payment or to change preferences related to his service.
Being required to login to a "general store" however, is something people don't have a lot of time for, and most would prefer not to do it.
Most who shop "products" get to the part where they're required to create an account, and they say "see ya" because they aren't interested in taking the time to fill in all of the required fields just to purchase "one" thing. They can get that "one" thing in the ip block next door and not be required to create an account anyway, so they go there instead.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I dislike registering on websites for the same reason that I don't like having dozens of store-cards. They offer me little (if anything) clutter up my wallet (read email inbox) and leave me open to junk mail (ditto).
But there is also the time and hassle factor. Amongst other reasons, I buy online for convenience. It saves me picking up the phone and ordering, or going down the shops. But, if I have to mess about with forms and validating emails before I can spend a few dollars, then I am going to go somewhere else.
Finally, nothing screams 'untrustworthy' louder than a website that requires registration without a *very* good reason. It also looks shoddy with sites that hide the 'guest' purchase option on the checkout page.
We need to remember who is giving who money.
There are credit card chargebacks, there are direct debit chargebacks, I have to manage debt collection, customers wire transfer to much money, they wire transfer not enough money, they wire transfer the payment twice, people send items back and want the amount credited to their next purchase, they submit an order and order additional products five minutes later, and so on.
All this is managed by my accounting software automatically and for this it needs customer accounts. So I cannot imagine a company that has reached a certain threshold to manage without customer accounts.
On the other hand I know that customers do not care about all this.
What makes the difference between a purchase with and without account? There is only one additonal information you need to collect: A password. Thats all.
So all you have to do is to persuade your customer to select a password. And I would be a poor salesman if I would not manage to get this tiny information from my customer and ususally this is quite easy:
1. Make sure that the customer has all the information he needs already. He has to have made his decision that he wants to purchase at you shop. If he is still in the decision making process you will loose him by asking him for a password.
2. Don't tell him that the password is needed to create a customer account. Tell him that he has to provide the password in order to be able to use some benefits. Not benefits for future orders, the customer does not even know if he will do another purchase at your shop. It has to be benefits for this precise order.
Like: He can check if his payment went through, he can access the order status, access the couriers tracking information, even change his order or cancel his order as long as it has not been processed.
If you tell a customer: Hey, here is a way you will be able to change your mind about your order later - all you have to do is provide six random digits - most customers won't think twice about it.
If you tell them however: Please create an account so you do not have to enter your address information again next time you order - what the heck - you are already talking about a next order when he has not even pressed the submitt button for the current order?
[edited by: jecasc at 9:02 am (utc) on Mar. 17, 2008]
So basically my success rate is only 16.2% on my funnel tracking - so my cart abandonment is roughly 83.8%. Thats crazy.
If 58% of my cart abandonment is merely people not wanting to login i find that absurd.
Seems to me you have login-a-phobia and would be better off going to your local store and paying full retail.
ByronM it is not my intention to be cheeky but I think you should look at your statements above and listen to what people are saying here. It would be fair to say that all of the people who have contributed to this thread buy stuff online. It would also be fair to say that their opinions of how this process should work are at least as valid as any you'll get elsewhere.
The majority of contributions answered your OP by saying that they do not like logging in, yes? This is a fact and you say that your statistics tell you that 58% of your lost sales are caused by people who do not want to login. Why try to justify your login process when you already know that this is what is causing your problems?
If I were you I would accept what your statistics are telling you, which is that your <potential> customers don't want to log in, fix this and try to convert the 58% you are losing.
You are of course perfectly entitled to believe that creating accounts for your clients is the best thing for them just as they are entitled to buy elsewhere if they don't agree. There is still some mileage in the old adage that the customer is always right. ;)
What makes the difference between a purchase with and without account? There is only one additonal information you need to collect: A password. Thats all.
So all you have to do is to persuade your customer to select a password. And I would be a poor salesman if I would not manage to get this tiny information from my customer and ususally this is quite easy:
It's not what's involved that is the problem. It's the customer's perception of what's involved. If I don't want to use yet another password the best salesman in the world will not convince me to do so.
I have a password protected document with a couple of hundred passwords for both clients and my own use. I deliberately avoid situations that force me to create another one when I have the option not to. I am sure that I am not the only one who thinks this way.
OK, what do you do next?
What really gets me is going through the shopping cart, get to payment and get sent to PayPal who insist that I open an account with them.
If I don't want to use yet another password the best salesman in the world will not convince me to do so.
And yet I bet you have dozens of times ordered online and just dont this: Provided another password. And probably you will have noticed that sometimes it will have bothered you more than other times. According to how the shop "sold them".
You also have to keep in mind the fact that most users simply provide the same password over and over again or just type in random letters and use the "password forgotten" feature of the website should they choose to return. At least the latter is what I do.
But thats something every shop owner has to decide for himself. For me the amount of time and money customer accounts save outweigh the sales I might loose. If it where otherwise I would abandon this feature.
I have faced one of those, one went to the point of warning me not to create a second account. Some ecom sites are about features without taking much of the customer's needs into consideration.
Absolutely, totally agree with you vincevincevince.
So many sites (ecommerce and otherwise) nowadays seem to demand registrations and passwords, and so many sites seem to be doing nefarious things with that information too, that it's no longer a trivial matter to ask a customer to register with a site.
If they're shopping around on dozens of sites, do they really want to create dozens of new IDs and passwords?
What was the result of your sales funnel for turning it off on the 14th?
Improvement or no change?
Inquiring minds want to know!
[edited by: engine at 9:23 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2008]
