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When Good Shopping Carts Go Bad
(continued)
But what happens when Good Carts Go Bad?
Unlike the Rotisserie infomercial, it’s not “Set it and Forget it”.
Understanding WHY the customer abandoned is critical for honing in on what the best remarketing efforts would be and which could be counterproductive.
- What percentage of your abandonment is due to buying behavior and what percentage to transaction failure?
What about the customers who WANT to purchase but your site fails them?
Let’s see how plays out in the ‘real’ world of online commerce
- Customer attempts to checkout
- Site fails the customer (cart issue, site error message, UI issue, 404…)
- Customer abandons with items left in the cart
- Remarketing kicks in – the customer gets email invite to re-engage, along with a discount
- Customer attempts to convert
- Site Fails
Ouch, you are now blindly encouraging the failure, customer after customer, putting your brand at risk and you didn’t even see it. Can you think of a worst case scenario?
Your Customer‘s Reaction:
- After your marketing dollars create demand, they give up on your site and buy from the competition, which is simple online – that competitor is merely a couple clicks away.
- They spread the word that your site failed them, frequently on widely disseminated channels, such as blogs, review sites or social networks
- They unsubscribe from your email list, or even worse mark you as “SPAM” out of anger
That potential customer who started out trying to give you money has now become a brand liability. This occurrence in volume can affect your email sender score threatening to send your following campaigns right to the junk/SPAM folder.
Extreme example? Yes. Possible? Sure. Pete Blackshaw wrote a book on just this topic, ‘Angry Customers tell 3,000, Satisfied customers tell one’ and Forbes.com turned the topic and a recent panel discussion of the topic into a 3 minute video, ‘Cyber Shoppers Complain’.
Death by 1,000 Cuts
You have now lost an online sale which could trickle into off-line brand avoidance and with social media influence, potentially impact your ability to attract future customers. Internally, your email manager is wondering why the opt-out rate is increasing (even with successful opens and clicks) and your line-of-business owner sees high-value customers leaving your database. Your long-term customer valuation metrics start dipping south and without visibility into the user’s online behavior, everyone starts asking the question, “Why”?
When the sink overflows the first thought might be to grab the towel… You may want to turn the water off first….
Look hard into your abandonments, meet with your entire marketing team and asking the hard questions, starting with ”Why are people not completing transactions?”. Discovering, indentifying and fixing these issues will not only improve your overall conversion rate immediately, it will fine tune all associated remarketing efforts. Your email team will thank you, along with your boss, shareholders and oh… your customers too.
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The original posting of this article can be found on the Tealeaf Blog. Click to learn more about Tealeaf and Customer Experience Management or review customer testimonials.
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