Forum Moderators: buckworks
As you may notice, I am new to webmasterworld. I work with an e-commerce site that currently faces cart abandonment by 85% of those who 'add to cart'. I am trying to improve the situation and as I sit with the data, I am wondering what to look for. Would appreciate your valuable suggestions.
Hope that helps
MM
When I hear about a high abandonment rate there are a few questions I ask right away.
The first is whether you're measuring abandonment "correctly" which basically means in a way that's comparable to other stats you've heard about. What are your numerator and denominator, what's your unit of measure, how have you filtered, etc.
The second is whether your cart persists after the session is closed. In other words, if somebody comes back tomorrow, will the items they left in the cart yesterday still be there? Some products and sites will have high within-visit abandonment rates just because of the nature of the product or the site itself. People don't add and purchase in the same visit. Or the site is big or confusing and using the cart as a bookmark becomes a way to cope.
Of course, you should look at every inch of the funnel. The step with the highest attrition might not be the problem step, though. In my experience, each step (add to cart, start checkout, provide billing info, see shipping charges, etc ...) has a different typical abandonment rate range that is somewhat consistent across "good" e-comm sites in the same general market. It would be great if you could compare each step's abandonment to the typical range for that step, though that data is hard to get. But keep the idea in mind because it might prevent you from getting obsessed with the abandonment of step that's actually not a problem.
Thank you for the recommendation. The cost kinda forces me to put it on the wish list.
cgrantski,
Thank you for your post. Your post is in line with my thoughts. The cart abandonment is what I am looking at fixing in an overall effort to improve conversion. We receive a reasonable amount of daily traffic and the average order size is around $300. So, I imagine we would have such abandonment rates.. but, the carts do persist and overall, it does even out to an abandonment rate of 85%. However, like you said, comparable data is tough to obtain..
What I am attempting to do is to see if there are reasons as to why (besides the actual cost of the product) our potential customers abandon us.
I have read some articles.. mostly a year or two old and am looking around for cases where subtle changes made impacts.. so that I can make a case with the design department.
Thanks again guys.
Borrow the money if necessary but buy it now.
You will recoup the investment very quickly.We did.!
MM
Thanks for the emphasis. I believe I will make the investment. I will keep you posted. Thanks again.
I don't know how your site is laid out but I fairly often will add product to a cart to just to get current prices and shipping. (some sites don't/can't display prices on the main product pages)
More then once I've gone elsewhere if:
1) Checkout seems painful (long, multi-page)
2) Vendor tries to sell me other products during checkout. (if its 'In my face')
3) More personal info is asked for then I feel is needed.
4) Sometimes I just want to give my CC# and address and buy the product... not have all my info stored for future (and spam) purposes. Storing my info for the future should be for my benefit and be my choice.
Andy
