E-retailers should be using information they can glean from their abandoned shopping cart to make site or product improvements, says a new white paper from
Fry Multimedia Inc.
Among the insights an e-retailer can gain from such an exercise are:
--How much time and how many visits most people need in order to commit to a purchase.
--To what degree visitors use the online store for browsing and research that ultimately lead to a sale at an offline store or from a catalog.
--The percentage of visitors who start a cart but never try to check out.
--How many visitors who start to check out actually complete the process.
"E-tailers tend to be obsessed with the proportion of online shopping carts that are abandoned and the resulting specter of lost sales," says Kara Heinrichs, Fry's chief customer experience officer. "We believe this focus is counter-productive and takes the e-tailer's attention away from measurements that can lead to real insights into online shopping behavior-- and real improvements in online merchandising."
Contrary to current thinking, an abandoned online cart is not tantamount to a shopper deserting a full grocery cart while fourth in line to pay at the supermarket, Heinrichs says. Consumers often use carts to "mark" items of note, for example, much like dog-earing a page in a catalog, or taking a garment to a fitting room, she says.
Looking at where in the checkout process carts are abandoned provides key insights for site and process improvement, the paper says. "E-tailers' back-end systems reveal what consumers actually bought, but abandoned carts show what people wanted to buy but didn't," Heinrichs says. "That's intriguing and valuable information. Imagine the cross-sell, personalization, and promotional possibilities this information can inspire."
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