Win abandoned cart customer

Increase your revenue by winning customers who abandoned carts

There are various reasons why the customers abandon the cart halfway through the checkout process. These almost-customers are low hanging fruits to give your business a boost. With a more that 65% cart abandonment rate, even if your business can bring in 50% of these customers back, it will increase your toplines.

      1. Pre-requisite to winning back:

When a customer begins the checkout process, it is very vital to gather one of the following: email or phone number. If you don't, there is no way to reach out to the customer and potentially get him back, unless he changes his mind and returns back.

      2. Trigger Emails:

Send a follow up cart abandonment email to the customer. The timing of the email and the content is utmost important. Emails sent WITHIN A FEW HOURS of cart abandonment have higher conversion rate. However, sending an email immediately when the cart is abandoned may be too intrusive. Also, if the email is sent a few days later, the customer perhaps would have lost interest. An email within 12-24 hours has shown maximum conversions. The other important aspect is the content of the email. Personalizing the email and offering help in terms of a direct customer service number or email would be useful to bring back customers. No sales pitch is required here.

      3. Analytics:

The analytics report provides informative statistics. Study the report to see at what stages the carts are abandoned. If you see a clear trend, it’s time to address your website by fixing the problem. Repeat the study post the fix.

      4. Remarketing & Retargeting:

      Remarketing & retargeting the customers who visited your site and did not place order is a good way to remind customers of their abandoned cart. To be able to do so, make some technical upgrades to your site. When the customer visited your site, persist their browse behavior local to the computer. When browsing other websites, the search engines personalize the ads so that they see their recent browse history. This may bring them back. Example: eBags.com – Once you leave the eBags.com site, it picks the browse history and shows the items you were interested in on other sites that you navigate to.

      5. Service call:

If you obtained the contact number of the customer during the checkout, a service call may help understand reasons for cart abandonment. Call them and help address their concern so as to complete the checkout process. A lot of companies have an option to connect with the customer service representative by live chat/ support number on the checkout screen. It helps the prospective customer right away during the checkout process.

      6. Incentivize:

In order to win customers back, have a program to incentivize them. Provide offers and promotions relevant to the products in cart. However, the incentives should be provided to selective customers based on their purchase history, buying pattern, cart value or some other business driver. Sending the offers right after the cart is abandoned may put the customer in a habit of expecting discounts. They will abandon their cart in this expectation each time. Example: GobalWholeSaleArt.com calls customers who abandons cart and works out offers to complete checkout.

Not all cart abandonments are bad. Customers do like to check items, add to cart, compare with competitors, think and come back. You can therefore, only diminish this percentage and not avoid it completely. While these are actions that can be taken post cart abondonment, it is important to understand Why Cart Abondonment happens on ecommerce sites.

Please provide your feedback on this article and add other ways that could possibly help in winning customers from abandoned carts back.

Reasons for ecommerce cart abandonment

What are the top reasons for Cart Abandonment in ecommerce?

What is the percentage of customer cart abandonment instances of your ecommerce site, when compared to order confirmation? What are the top reasons your customers abandon the cart and never complete the checkout?

If you have a customer who has come to you site to shop, your marketing has worked to bring the customer to your site. If you do not manage to capitalize this opportunity and convert this footprint to sale, you have lost your customer, not just for this one purchase but may be for future as well. In fact, in this world of digital social networking, it does not take long for publicity – both good and bad. You perhaps also lost some prospective customers.

In 2011, the average cart abandonment Rate was 65.23%. This is subsequently higher during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2012, the statistics reveal that this percentage would be higher than the prior years.

What are the top reasons why your customers abandon the cart?

While there may be reasons that are solely customers specific, like the customer is not ready to make the purchase or the customer changed his mind or any other constraint specific to him. In this article, I would like to call out the reasons that are more retailer specific and things that could be changed or improved, so that the retailer provides the customer a seamless checkout flow.

Listed below are some of the reasons why the customer would abandon the cart:

     1. Delayed Stock check:

Ecommerce websites that do not perform a real time inventory check on color, size when the customer adds the item to the cart, result to customer’s frustration. Perform the stock check when the customer is making the selection on the product page and adding it to the cart. Performing a stock check in checkout, when the decision has been made, would only lead to customers abandoning the cart.

     2. Lengthy registration / no guest checkout:

If you are the lucky once to have new visitors on the website, build the customer relationship. It is good enough for you to just get the email id of the customer. The guest checkout should be as little as email address. It is important to capture one way to reach out your customer. Don’t miss that by throwing a registration form that makes your customer close the browser. If the customer chooses to register, the MUST HAVE information on your site should be minimal.

     3. Insecure checkout:

With an increase in cybercrime, the users have become very careful about providing their information over the web. Make sure that your ecommerce allows for a secure checkout in order to gain confidence of the user during checkout.

     4. Limited payment options:

Does your site provide all possible options to the customer on the payment? At the very basic, the ecommerce site should have debit / credit / gift card checkout as the payment methods. If you offer loyalty programs, the checkout should make it easy for the customer to use their points and redeem them partially or completely against the purchase.

     5. Coupons and offers:

Do you restrict the user on how to use the coupons and offers that are not clearly called out in the offer itself? Showing new variables during checkout would disappoint the customer and make rethink, sometimes abandoning the cart.

     6. High shipping cost:

Ecommerce today has grown rapidly and one of the reasons why people buy online is because of simplicity and getting the options that they need in the comfort of their house. However, the whole purpose to buy online would be defeated if, in order to shop online, the customer is paying a very high shipping charge. While next day shipping could be offered at a high cost, most customers are not willing to pay additional for ground shipping. Low product cost and high shipping results in abandoned carts. Offer the customers free or lower shipping for normal delivery and pick up in store options.

     7. Restricted shipping:

Do you offer a varied shipping option to all locations? One of the things that get traded in online shopping when compared to in-store purchase is the time duration to have the product. Although online shopping does give the convenience to purchase, if the shipping takes too long, it may not interest the buyer. They may prefer buying it from the nearby store in order to get the product on time. Make sure the shipping options are competitive enough and are not a reason for the customer to leave the cart.

     8. Ugly / complex user interface:

If the user interface you provide is loud, ugly or complex, it would not please your customers.

Have a clean design with a very well-toned and marketable copy. Provide the information in the right place and be cautious about the data. A few usability ideas would be to display the user progress, limiting the call to action, displaying discount and calculating the final price early in the checkout process, designing the layout that goes with the eye flow etc.

     9. Difficult to decipher CAPTCHAs:

If you are using CAPTCHAs, chances are that it would lower your conversion rate. Every user finds it difficult to interpret; they carry no meaning and are difficult to read. Sites using CAPTCHAs for all secure transactions may have a high cart abandonment rate, for the simple reason that it impacts the usability and restricts the flow of the customer.

     10. High price compared to competitor:

Smart shopaholics always compare prices across competitors. If your items are priced more than one your competition is offering, why would anyone proceed with the order? Would you?

     11. Unfriendly Returns and Exchange Policy:

Online shopping has once clear drawback. When you buy in store, what you see is what you get. However, that logic fails with online purchases. Have a fair returns and exchange policy for online purchases comes as a package with online shopping. If you make the returns and exchanges difficult, the pitfall would be lower conversion rates.

     12. Technical issues:

If your website responds real slow or has bugs that stop the user to proceed, chances that the customer would keep trying to complete their order are slim.

     13. Cross sells and up-sells:

Are you doing cross sells and up-sells during the checkout process? If you are doing so, perhaps instead of helping you to gain more business, it is confusing the customer thereby delaying their purchase. Once the customer has reached checkout, DO NOT give any second thoughts to him to go back and revisit the decision. You would have customers email id once the order is purchased; cross-sell and up-sells would follow after the order is placed. These act as distractions if shown during checkout.

     14. Delivery options:

Give the options of delivery to the customer and do not restrict. You sites need an upgrade if you do not provide options to order online; purchase from a store; order online and get delivered to a near by store.

     15. Not living up to your promise:

If you promised the customer any discount, loyalty program, offers, coupons, free shipping – make sure you live up to it. Any deviation from what you promised would lead to lack of trust and not help conversion.

In short, an abandoned cart directly hits your topline. While above is one aspect of taking a hit on the topline, there are corrective ways to win customers who abandoned carts.

In the fast moving digital world, it is important that the business seek feedback from the customers, look at the usability of their commerce site, as well as learn from the metrics on what could be done in order to increase sales and profit margins.

Let me know what you think about this article. If you have ever experienced any situation leading you to leave the cart, please feel free to share.

Competitive Benchmarking

What is competitive benchmarking?

Did you ever demand you parents for the same gadget that your friend had?
Did you parents ever compare your grades with you elder brother or sister?
Ever faced comparison with your peers at workplace to get that much deserved promotion?

We compare and are compared with competitive people around us, all the time.

Now take another aspect of this competition.

When you asked for the gadget, did you ask for an outdated version or the latest model?
When your parents compared the grades with your siblings, did they want you to have a better or lower grade?
When you faced competition with your peers, did your boss compare you with the one better than you?

So not only we compare, we compare with something / someone better in some aspect. We always seek for high quality and performance.

Competitive Benchmarking in simple terms is comparison of performance with the benchmarked industry standards. In a way, it means that to be successful in the industry, you need to know what your competition's performance levels are. The benchmarking is done on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and this may be different based on the industry types.

However, whatever industries it may belong to, Competitive benchmarking results are reflected as a function of time, cost or quality. While there are several other parameters, like customer satisfaction, human resources, employee satisfaction, all of them impact of or the other key functions of time, cost or quality.

Robert Camp defined Competitive benchmarking as ‘The search for the industry best practices that will lead to superior performance.’

Importance & Advantages of Competitive Benchmarking

In the fierce and cut-throat competitive environment, it is essential to reduce the operating cost at the same time continue to deliver high performance. Competitive Benchmarking is a planned and structured way of understanding the competition and having a baseline to do comparison. With this study, the business would be able to find the gaps between their performance and that of the benchmarked industry standards. Knowing the gap, benchmarking also provides areas of improvement to bridge the gap by setting achievable and meaningful targets over a period of time. It helps in defining the road map to get closer and go over the set benchmarking standards.

The data obtained by competitive benchmarking is an eye opener and the transformers in organizations find it easy to present the results to the senior executives and suggest a need for a process or strategy transformation to become competitive.

Benchmarking is important as it helps the organization in;

1. The current state assessment
2. Basis for future state and transformation with a defined road-map
3. Continuous improvement to be at pace with changing environment
4. Having a common vision across organization & driving change

Steps involved in Competitive Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a structured process. There are companies who are skilled in carrying out the benchmarking across industries. A lot of tools and resources are available in the market to conduct this study. Benchmarking involves the steps as below:

1.      Planning

a.      What is  to be benchmarked

b.      Define the competition

c.      Understand the data gathering approach

d.      Identify the source of data

2.      Data gathering and validation

a.      Gather the data

b.      Understand the KPIs to be validated

c.      Produce the benchmark results

3.      Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment

a.      Understand Voice of Customer

b.      Review CAT Scores

c.      Determine current performance levels

4.      Review & recommend

a.      Review the gaps

b.      Identify the causes

c.      Put together recommendations

d.      Review and gain stakeholder acceptance

5.      Execution

a.      Develop plan of action

b.      Monitor progress

c.      Recalibrate benchmarks

Types of Competitive Benchmarking

There is a vast variety of competitive benchmarking techniques that is available in the market. Based on the specific need, one of more competitive analysis may be recommended.

1.      Strategy Benchmarking

2.      Healthcare Benchmarking

3.      Financial Benchmarking

4.      Salary Benchmarking

5.      Business Benchmarking

6.      Hospital Benchmarking

7.      Marketing Benchmarking

8.      Logistics Benchmarking

9.      External Benchmarking

10.    Internal Benchmarking

11.    Human Resource Benchmarking

and the list goes on !

What next?

As the environment keeps on changing, the process of competitive benchmarking can never be termed as complete. It is an ongoing process to compare oneself with the toughest competitors to survive and flourish the business. What seems to be a benchmark today would change later and hence for an organization or business to succeed, the competitive benchmarking should be an ongoing process. Recalibration of benchmark should be an integral part of organization processes. Defining the KPIs and comparison with the highest qualitative standards would help in continuous improvement.

If you have carried out a competitive benchmarking study, please share your experience. Look forward to your feedback on this article.

Sites similar to Amazon's mturk

Crowdsourcing with Amazon's mTurk

With Amazon mturk being such a success, the workforce is looking at more sites similar to Amazon mturk, that can help them earn money working at home.

One thing that web has done is - united us. In many different ways – be it ecommerce or social networking or information, web has made its presence felt. A new way by which web has made its presence in recent times is by uniting the mechanical taskforce.

Amazon's mturk

Amazon’s mturk is one such site that has given innumerable opportunities to people with different level of skills to sit in the comfort of their homes and get paid. Although the amount paid for  these work from home jobs is not a lot, but this is a great hit for hard-working taskforce.

The concept of these sites is to CrowdSource the work amongst the virtual workforce.

These sites have new jobs posted every single minute and need taskforce to get the jobs done. Depending on what kind of jobs you qualify for, you would be paid anywhere from few cents to double digit $ for a few seconds to few hours worth of effort.

In order to get more from these sites, constantly increase your qualifications and attempt to do specialized tasks.

If you are looking at more sites similar to amazon mTurk, here is the list.  

1. Cloud Crowd – Requires a facebook login 

2. Amazon's mturk 

3. Mobile Works

4. Mini Jobz

5. Sama Source

6. Varolo - Requires a facebook login

7. Micro Workers

8. Short Task

9. o Desk

10. Crowd Tap

11. Click Worker

12. Minute Workers

13. Hits Worth Turking For

14.  eLance

15. Text Broker

16. Joy Boy

17. Why do Work

18. Scriptlance

19. Casting Words

Please leave a comment or share more sites similar to Amazon's mturk.

Tips to Pass Agile Certification ACP

Passing Agile Certification

The author is PMP, IPSR, ACP Certified and has 14 years of experience in Information Technology

Here are key focus areas to be successful in PMI's Agile Certified Practioner (ACP) exam. Understanding of these would help answer a sizeable number of ACP exam questions.

      1. Manifesto and Values – Knowing the manifesto and agile values will help you answer at least 10-12 questions correctly. If there are any conflicting answers – agile values and manifesto is the right thing to do.

      2. Meetings – Understand the importance of each meeting –Stand ups, retrospective & planning.

      3. Agile Practices – Differentiate lean, scrum, kanban and extreme programming.

      4. Roles & responsibilities - Understand roles & responsibilities within different methodologies. E.g. Agile coach vs facilitator

      5. Understand the Agile Charts & KPIs – Burn Up, burn down chart for sprints and risks, calculating velocity, ROI, earned value metrics.

      6. Read and re-read worded questions – Word problems tend to focus you attention on something that is not very important. Key is to understand the MOST important issue and not what is the FIRST thing that is projected to be an issue. In case of conflicts, manifesto and agile values win.

      7. Application of knowledge – If answers are not obvious, apply your knowledge from experience.

      8. Agile Concepts - Understand affinity estimation, planning poker, wide band delphi, value based decomposition, Release backlogs, sprint backlogs, value stream mapping, iteration vs sprint, validation vs verification, WIP limits, servant leadership, minimally marketable feature, done done, portfolio management, agile risks.

      9. Various levels of Planning – Know the depth that is covered in Strategic, Release, Iteration & Daily Planning.

     10. Exam Questions - Take some practice tests from legitimate websites or books. Questions from Andy Crowe's – ‘The PMI-ACP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try’ is very helpful.

      11. Agile Training - I personally do not see a need to take training if you have worked on a few projects and read some material. Any online training can be counted against your contact hours for this exam.

      12. Recommended book – The PMI lists 10 books for Agile. No one can read all of them. Here is what I would suggest that would be good balance to get though the exams

      

         Mike Cohn - User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development

         James Shore - The Art of Agile Development

         Alistair Cockburn - Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game

         Andy Crowe’s The PMI-ACP Exam: How To Pass On Your First Try 

        

     Good luck for your gig !