26 replies to this topic

[Laser Etch USA]

This may be a stupid question and a very simply approach, but here it goes. I looked in my yahoo merchant records and see 243 shopping cart views in the last 60 days. When I cross reference this to actual online orders, note we are a small enough company to do this, I see only 19 orders for the same 60 days. This makes me curious.......why all the shopping cart views and so few orders? Any ideas on potential problems?

[AaronNimocks]

I hardly ever buy anything online but I do tend to look in the shopping cart for some reason. Not sure why, and I guess other people are just like me.

[vinnie2227]

Is the checkout process easy? Are your shipping rates available for viewing before the customer goes to the cart? Maybe people are adding items to the cart and then abandoning it once they see the total price.

If customers are just price checking and/or they find the checkout process not easy, that could account for the abandonment.

[Laser Etch USA]

Vinnie,
It is as easy as it gets I guess, it is just a yahoo account so it is subject to the same ordering process as any other store with I think 5 pages of entering information with shipping, billing, payment, etc.

As far as the shipping, you are very correct in the fact that it can not be viewed until the end of the order process, which we see as a huge problem! The question is, what is the best way to solve it?? Ideas??

[torka]

There could be any number of reasons.

Could be somebody bought more than one item, or shopped around a bit -- maybe put some items in the cart, then took them back out again, that sort of thing -- then your views would be higher than your purchases even without a frightening shopping cart abandonment rate.

A common reason for shopping cart abandonment is "change of plans". People put something in their cart, then change their minds for some reason. Maybe they found it cheaper somewhere else, or it was an impulse buy and the impulse passed before they actually hit the "checkout" button.

Another reason -- as Vinnie alluded -- is information gathering. Since your site doesn't reveal shipping until the end of the checkout process, that's the only way people have of price comparison -- to go all the way to that last step, then back out -- even if all they're doing is trying to find out how much the item will cost delivered.

The standard Yahoo 5-page checkout process is actually probably a little too long from the conversion studies I've seen. Dunno if there's anything you can do to shorten that, short of moving off Yahoo and getting another shopping cart, though.

As to the shipping, it depends on what you're selling and what your shipping policies are. For instance, if you ship UPS and charge by weight, you really can't tell people up front what their shipping charges are -- you have to know where they are and the total weight of the items they're purchasing before you can calculate the shipping charge.

On the other hand, if you can at all standardize your shipping charges (by dollar value of the order, one flat rate, whatever), then you should be able to post a chart of shipping rates. This should reduce the number of abandoned carts from people who were simply trying to find out the "final" price of the product.

Shopping cart abandonment is a fact of life online. I don't know of any site that has a zero percent abandon rate. You might try using your favorite SE and searching for shopping cart abandonment or something similar. You'll find tons of articles and resources with ideas for reducing your abandonment rate.

HTH!

--Torka

[RyanBlank]

You should do a quich search for 'shopping cart abandonment'. There is plenty of resources out there that provide techniques to help improve your ratio of views to sales..
<edit>Repeating what Torka said, but not intentionally </edit>

Simple things like:
adding a phone #
Providing shipping info
Link to Return Policy
Fax Order forms
Show checkout process steps (which one you're on and how many left)
Ability to change order/modify order
Show BBB icon if a member and other organizations to show ligitamacy

Can all go a long way in answering questions/concerns the shopper may have before they purchase.

[vinnie2227]

As I am not familiar with Yahoo storefronts, you may not be able to do this, but can you not just add a link with the shipping information on the page? If you're shipping rates seem high to customers, they will likely abandon the cart.

[Laser Etch USA]

All great ideas so far. I agree yahoo shopping cart is way to long, but as you said, no way to get around that except for a different platform. With regards to shipping, we indeed do ship by weight since we have a wide range of custom products. We have toyed with the idea of just absorbing free ground shipping in order to convert more people. The question is, would the cost be worth the gain of additonal orders if any. I understand abandonment is a fact of life, I am just looking to find an answer to the huge discrepency and how to resolve it. Unfortunately, yahoo has a fairly standard method of ordering including what buttons, etc. can be on the pages. Keep the ideas coming!

[RyanBlank]

We have toyed with the idea of just absorbing free ground shipping in order to convert more people. The question is, would the cost be worth the gain of additonal orders if any.

That's definitely a business decision you will have to make on your own. In my opinion, a sale can be worth more than just the profit gained (as you probably already know). It can create repeat customers and word of mouth advertising among other things. Which all can grow exponentially over time..

Regardless, there's no need to eat the cost of shipping totally. I have found that flat fee shipping converts pretty well compared to other methods we've tested.

[vinnie2227]

We also use a flat rate based on the dollar amount spent.

[Randy]

Going back to the original question, don't forget that most likely any Spider visits from any of the search engines are also going to count as cart visits. It's been forever since I used a Yahoo! cart, but back then they didn't break those out from the gross visits number.

When a site is young this can be a major contributor to just the sort of discrepancy you've mentioned.

[Laser Etch USA]

Randy,
Just curious, it sounds like you left yahoo some time ago. Would this be a serious consideration or is yahoo just to much easier to use?

As far as flat rate shipping, that may be a happy medium to end the question of shipping cost, but not eat the entire cost. True, it is a business decision, and we are debating long and hard the power of advertising "free shipping".

Anyone aware of a way to tweek the yahoo cart system to shorten it or smooth it out?

[Randy]

Randy,
Just curious, it sounds like you left yahoo some time ago. Would this be a serious consideration or is yahoo just to much easier to use?

Technically speaking, none of my own sites have ever been a Yahoo! store. My limited experience with them goes back to the old days when I used to design sites for others. Some of them chose Yahoo! stores because of the Yahoo! brand and because they found the interface pretty easy to use.

[torka]

As far as flat rate shipping, that may be a happy medium to end the question of shipping cost, but not eat the entire cost. True, it is a business decision, and we are debating long and hard the power of advertising "free shipping".

I wish I could lay my hands on it right now, but alas I can't. In any case, I do seem to recall a study that showed that people were influenced enough by an offer of "free shipping" that they would even willingly pay a higher base item price to get it.

In other words, you can build at least a part of the cost of shipping into your product price structure. As long as you're not out of line with your competitors' price including shipping, you may actually find a conversion lift from an offer of free shipping even with higher base prices.

In my experience, pricing is one of the hardest parts of being in business. The only way to know the effect of anything for sure is to test, test, test.

--Torka

[Laser Etch USA]

Torka,

Testing is a huge part, but as an online retailer......this time of year is an awful time to perform a test as I am sure you know! Our serious debate is trying ot get a leg up versus jsut competing. We are considering leaving the current price structure intact and absorbing the additonal shipping cost in an effort to increase volume. Same old story.....volume...or price point. We are jsut really digging deep into site to try and make it work efficiently. This is how I came accross the high shopping cart views and obviously low orders. I think what has been said so far has all contributed, but there still seems to be an overwhelming gap in the numbers in my opinion. Now, trying to find the cause!