• $75 million IPO filed by Marketo
• $150 million IPO filed by Tableau
• $35 million in funding raised by Hubspot
• $54 million in funding raised by InfusionSoft
• $871 million paid for Eloqua by Oracle

Behind all the activity is the undeniable advantage that companies gain by automating and streamlining their marketing processes: increased operational efficiencies and accelerated revenue growth. With marketing automation, companies can use technology to discover and qualify sales leads, foster relationships with prospective customers, enhance relationships with established customers and improve the overall performance of their marketing organizations.The big industry push to automate marketing tasks is making the automation of conversion best practices even more critical than ever. Ecommerce companies are realizing the importance of running automated conversion campaigns that can respond to shopping cart abandoners in real time, as soon as they abandon, rather than hours or days later. That kind of immediacy can’t be achieved with batch-mode operations.

While real-time responses may seem overly aggressive, studies show they best serve customers and ecommerce companies alike. If customers abandon their shopping carts and don’t return within the first hour, then the probability of completing the sale is reduced by 90%. Automation can ensure customers receive relevant messages in the first few seconds after abandonment. That’s when customers are most receptive to appropriate follow-up and companies have the greatest opportunity to convert the sale.

Of course, “relevant” and “appropriate” are key to conversion success, which is why conversion – much like standard lead generation and nurturing – must take a big data approach. First, companies need to continuously correlate streams of data from multiple channels, including websites, stores, mobile, social, call center, and chat.

Next, they have to use that data to trigger “next best actions,” each of which is optimized for each individual customer based on the customer’s unique buying behaviors. The end result? A personalized ecommerce experience that automates messaging and follow-up to optimize conversion rates.

Going forward, we’ll likely see conversion platforms, such as the SeeWhy CORE platform, merge with the larger marketing automation platforms. After all, it only makes sense to give companies a unified, automated system that lets them not only market to leads but also convert those leads to customers.

In this post, we will break down how even the value of the cart will affect purchase behavior.

Cart size vs. abandonment rates – The cart value has a clear impact on the shopping cart abandonment rate. Surprisingly, low-value carts can have higher abandonment rates than carts with a higher value:

• $0 to $100 cart: 78% abandonment
• $101 to $250 cart: 52% abandonment
• $250 to $300 cart: 70% abandonment
• $300 to $350 cart: 70% abandonment
• $350 to $400 cart: 73% abandonment
• $400+ cart: 85% abandonment

Carts at critical price points have very high abandonment rates. Below, you’ll see how a $100 cart value drives up abandonment. Once past the $100 threshold, abandonment rates begin to fall.

• Cart value: Abandonment rate
• $1 to $25 cart: 85% abandonment
• $26 to $50 cart: 75% abandonment
• $51 to $75 cart: 63% abandonment
• $76 to $100 cart: 59% abandonment
• $100 to $150 cart: 78% abandonment
• $151 to $200 cart: 42% abandonment

Key take away: Check the ratio of shipping cost to cart value for some of your lower value abandoned baskets. Test thresholds for minimum order free shipping carefully. $99 is likely to work better than $100.

Analyzing the abandonment rates – Individual products can have very different, unexpected abandonment rates. For instance, on one ecommerce site, a $12.99 item and a $239.99 item each had a 99.8% abandonment rate. Meanwhile, the same site had a $3.99 item and a $599.00 item, each of which had a 50% abandonment rate.

Key take away: Build a spreadsheet to rank frequently carted and abandoned products. Check the description on the product detail page and the shipping costs associated with these frequently abandoned items.

Summary 

Clearly, rethinking your approach to shopping cart abandoners is going to be a critical factor in reducing shopping cart abandonment. For many customers, abandonment is part of the normal purchase cycle. This is not restricted only to new customers, but applies across the board, including a site’s most loyal repeat buyers.

Building a relationship with new visitors is critical if they are to trust the brand and, ultimately, return again to abandon or buy. For many buyers, then, abandonment is simply a stepping stone to a purchase.

Want more information? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

Check out our full infographic here.

This post will focus on the buyer’s time-to-purchase patterns and how time make a huge difference in determining how likely visitors are to purchase.

From first visit to purchase – The average time delay between a buyer’s first visit and purchase is 19 hours, but 72% of visitors will buy in the first 12 hours. Here’s the complete breakdown:

• 30% purchase in less than 20 minutes
• 50% purchase in 20 minutes to 1 hour
• 60% purchase in 1 to 3 hours
• 65% purchase in 3 to 12 hours
• 72% purchase in 12 to 24 hours
• 80% purchase in 1 to 3 days
• 85% purchase in 3 to 7 days
• 95% purchase in 1 to 2 weeks
• 100% purchase in more than 2 weeks

Key takeaway: Start remarketing as soon as the visitor abandons the site. The first 12 hours are the greatest opportunity to convert a sale. New customer remarketing following a first purchase should be an additional core capability of every ecommerce website.

Check that your shopping cart persistence is set to a minimum of 60 days.

Abandonment patterns within 28 days – Breaking down the abandoner population reveals distinct patterns relative to their previous 28 days of activity on a given ecommerce website. Specifically,

• 43% are “one-time” or “first-time abandoners.” The recovery rate for one-time abandoners is 18%.
• 42% are “serial abandoners” who have abandoned more than once. The recovery rate for serial abandoners is 48%.
• 15% are “recent goal abandoners” who have made one or more purchases followed by an abandon. The recovery rate for recent goal abandoners is 57%.

Key takeaway:  People who abandon more than once are 2.6 times more likely to make a purchase. Recent activity, in the form of either a purchase or abandon, increases the probability of recovering a sale after shopping cart abandonment. Therefore, rethink the way that you approach abandonment. It is an essential part of the purchase cycle.

In the last part of our series, we will talk about how cart size influences shopping behavior.

Can’t wait to find out more? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

Check out our full infographic here.

The numbers below are based on SeeWhy’s extensive research and study of online behavior. While some may appear counter-intuitive, all of these figures represent real ecommerce activity of real people. In turn, we gain a clear idea of what buyers actually do when they shop online as well as key takeaways that can help further reduce your shopping cart abandonment.

In this part, we will focus on new visitors vs. returning visitors on your ecommerce website and how likely they are to buy.

First-time visitors – Let’s start with new, first-time visitors to an ecommerce site. First of all, 99% of these visitors won’t buy on their first visit. Of those who don’t buy, 25% will abandon and never return while 75% will abandon but intend to return.

Key takeaway: 81% of online merchants believe that the majority of abandoners are wasting the merchants’ time. However, the bulk of abandoners – 75% – have some degree of intent to purchase and will return to the site to abandon again or purchase.

Returning visitiors – When returning visitors abandon a second time, 53% won’t return again within 28 days. Of the 47% that will return, one in four will make a purchase.

Only 3% of new customers will buy again while 11% of returning visitors who have made a recent purchase (i.e., within the previous 28 days) will buy again.

Key takeaway: Most visitors don’t buy immediately but require a series of visits and abandons over time while considering their purchase. The more that a customer visits the site and the more that they buy, in general, the more they will buy in the future.

In the next part of series, we’ll talk about how timing plays into purchasing behavior.

Can’t wait to find out more? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

Check out our full infographic here.

What can be done to convert abandoners into customers?

In the typical eCommerce conversion funnel, the shopper starts on the landing page and then moves on to the product page, adds the product to the shopping cart and then proceeds to checkout. The first step in converting abandoners into customers, then, is understanding how shoppers arrive at the shopping cart.

In our research, email remains the dominant force in getting shoppers to ecommerce sites. Overall, we found that traffic arriving at the shopping cart breaks down into the following categories:

• 58% via email
• 17.9% via direct URL entry
• 10.3% via search
• 4.8% via SEM
• 4.3% via link
• 4.3% via social media
• 1.7% via display advertising

We also researched conversion percentages of the different methods by which shoppers arrive at the shopping cart. In other words, for any given method, how well did it sell? Just take look at these conversion rates:

• 67.7% for email
• 23.6% for direct URL entry
• 1.65% for search
• 2.11% for social media
• 1.75% for link
• 0.88% for SEM
• 0.53% for display advertising

The next step in converting abandoners into customers is to capture the email addresses of all site visitors and use those email addresses to convert customers. After all, only 3% of visitors will buy on any site visit – 97% don’t. But a returning customer is nine times more likely to buy compared with a new visitor. Email can be used to nudge abandoners to return.

Key take away: email remains an eCommerce staple. The further a visitor progresses down the funnel, the more likely that the eventual conversion will come following a click from an email. Thus, the first steps towards converting abandoners into customers is capturing emails in order to keep the customer connected with your brand and product.

In the next blog series, I’ll discuss how to understand online buyer behavior and thereby optimize your eCommerce efforts.

Can’t wait to find out more? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

You can also check out our full infographic posted on Multichannel Merchant.

Why are people abandoning?

In the U.S., 88% of online customers – 136 million people – abandon shopping carts each year. Two primary factors are driving the abandonment numbers. First, customers are becoming more sophisticated buyers. Easy access to competitors and the ability to easily compare prices are changing buyer behavior, both online and in-store.

Forrester Research has found that the top two causes of abandonment are price and timing. Parse the Forrester findings and you’ll find that, among the abandoners:

• 44% thought that shipping and handling costs were too high
• 41% were not ready to purchase the product
• 27% wanted to compare prices
• 25% found the product price was higher than their budget
• 24% just wanted to save for later purchase

Other researchers found similar, price-driven reasons for shopping cart abandonment. An e-tailing group study found that 47% of consumers are unwilling to purchase unless a promotion is offers. Likewise, 36% of consumers will not buy unless free shipping is offered, according to comScore.

So what does that mean for your eCommerce website?

Tuning your website to make the checkout process smoother is only part of the answer. To improve your conversion rates, you must also design remarketing campaigns to address price and timing objects.

In the next part of the series, we’ll talk about what can be done to convert abandoners into customers.

Can’t wait to find out more? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

You can also check out our full infographic posted on Multichannel Merchant.

In this blog series, I’ll discuss the findings from our extensive study of online behavior, including research performed by SeeWhy as well as third parties. I want to help you understand why some customers buy online and why others don’t. And I want to provide you with key takeaways that can help significantly reduce your shopping cart abandonment.

So, Who’s abandoning?

One of the first questions raised by shopping cart abandonment is who, exactly, are the abandoners?

It turns out that the typical abandoner earns more than the average income, holds a college degree, and has been shopping online longer than non-abandoners. The average abandoner spends 19% more each year, compared to visitors who don’t abandon.

Taking a closer look at the abandoner population reveals some interesting gender-related patterns as well. For instance, males are likely to compare prices and less likely to abandon. Females, on the other hand, are likely to save products for later, take longer to buy and are even more sensitive to shipping and handling costs.

Whats your experience with shopping cart abandon? What are some reasons you’ve abandoned in the past?

You can also check out our full Infographic posted on Multichannel Merchant.

Can’t wait to find out more? Download our free eBook on The Science of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

As you can see in our recent case study, Deckers selected SeeWhy to better serve website visitors throughout their online shopping experience. The company implemented many innovative remarketing techniques to make sure they could connect with customers “in the moment”. Here are three lessons that ecommerce companies can learn from Deckers’ unique approach to email remarketing:

Lesson 1: Make an Impression with Mobile
Deckers recognized that its customers were increasing their mobile email use, a trend that affected all channels, including email channel sales. Approximately 50 percent of the people who received an email from Deckers opened it on a mobile device. While convenient for customers, mobile email was having a huge negative impact on email sales: mobile users were converting at a lower rate than their stationary counterparts.

Recognizing that mobile trends won’t be reversing anytime soon, Deckers moved decisively to get ahead of the curve. Today, the company’s SeeWhy-driven abandoned cart program offers tighter targeting and more sophisticated remarketing, complete with browse campaigns and different types of automated, behavior-based triggers. The result? Deckers is increasing revenue despite the negative conversion impacts of consumer behaviors on mobile devices.

Lesson 2: Multiple Messages Maximize Returns
SeeWhy’s email remarketing experience has led to a series of best practices that continues to stand the test of time. Among these are the timing and tone of the remarketing emails. We’ve found that an immediate response with a genuine offer of assistance goes a long way to improving conversion rates, regardless of a company’s online personality and brand identity.

Consequently, Deckers took a page from SeeWhy’s best practices playbook and runs its email remarketing program as a multi-stage campaign that uses three emails drafted with a customer service-oriented tone. The first message is sent in real time, immediately after abandonment. The second and third emails are sent 23 hours and six days later, respectively. The third email includes an offer of free, second day shipping. For Deckers, the first email of the three has proven to be the most successful, recovering the majority of the results for the campaign.

Lesson 3: Optimize and Refine
Deckers is in the process of rolling out the solution across 13 sites, and planning for the next stage of its shopping cart recovery efforts. But the project doesn’t stop there. Deckers knows that they must continue to optimize and refine the experience for their customers. In particular, the company plans to refine its remarketing email copy and content using Conversion Manager’s A/B testing feature to further optimize conversion rates.

Deckers is just one of the many companies that are raising the marketing bar to better meet their customers’ shopping needs. Visit the case studies section of our website to learn some of the tips and tricks that other SeeWhy customers are using today.

Both retailers have plenty of caveats in their terms and conditions: You have to be able to prove that the price and product is available, and managers will have a right of veto in some cases. Will this stop showrooming or actually encourage it?

Over the holiday period last year, 60 percent of holiday shoppers started their holiday shopping search at Amazon, looking to establish a base price. Research shows that showrooming is real: Consumers use their mobiles first for checking store locations and opening hours, then for price checking.

However, this is missing the point. Yes, consumers can and will check online prices when in store. Yes, consumers are heavily driven by price in today’s economy.

But, consumers also value other things in addition to price alone. These are essentially ‘experiential’ benefits of shopping in the mall — the ability to just drop into a store when you’re passing, try on items of clothing or look at the available connections on a TV, to get advice from a friend or from a member of staff, and of course, the instant gratification that comes with taking the item away immediately. Not focusing on these benefits to concentrate on price on your competitors’ terms makes no sense.

All big box retailers should read PwC’s Experience Radar which examines the motivations
of consumers to buy from a particular retailer. In this chart, while price is the number one factor influencing where to shop, past experience, brand and convenience are also significant factors.

PWC describe how it is a moment of truth that defines a relationship between a retailer and its customers.

“Over half of shoppers cite friendly staff assistance as the key to winning or losing them. Invest in training knowledgeable staff to prevent buyer’s remorse. Shoppers utilize staff knowledge to affirm purchase decisions — product knowledge and recommendations account for almost 1/3rd of good experiences related to support.”

So perhaps the big box retailers don’t have to price match, but merely be similar enough in price and differentiate themselves with great service.

This gets to the heart of the advantages that multi-channel retailers have over a pure-play ecommerce company. No prizes for guessing that price isn’t on the list:

• Service

Unfortunately in today’s retail environment, personal, friendly and knowledgeable service is all too often absent. Many people dread going into a Best Buy knowing that they will probably know more about the product they’re interested in (having researched online) than the shop assistant. The sale was there to be closed; only the personal service was missing. Where is the expertise? Where’s the friendly service that helps me to justify the difference in price between getting it now or marginally cheaper online later?

• Personal connection

Face to face service can be very personal and can build a relationship in ways just not possible online. Humans react to faces very differently than to a graphical user interface or to a voice on the other end of the phone. We know instantly when we meet someone whether they are genuine, interested in helping us, or are bored.

We ‘connect’ with people we meet: Great, friendly service in-store is almost always remembered and will often brighten a customer’s day. Moreover, as the customer moves ever closer to a purchase, an expert can be on hand to affirm the customer’s choice, thereby clinching the sale.

A subtle touch can also dramatically influence the probability of purchase:

“Shoppers in a supermarket were approached with a request to sample a new food product. Half the shoppers were touched during the request, and the other half were not. Touch increased the probability of both trying the food sample and buying the product. The touch and no-touch groups did not differ in their taste rating of the product.” (see Taylor & Francis)

Note in this study, both groups had the same view of the taste of the product, but the personal connection triggered by a simple touch changed the probability of getting the sale.

• Experience the product before buying

Online clothing and shoe retailers are suffering with very high return rates, often 50 percent, simply because customers are unable to try on items before buying. The ability to see, touch and feel items is incredibly important in the consumer purchase process. For example, a towel is touched on average six times before it is purchased (see Paco Underhill, ‘Why We Buy’), illustrating how sensory consumers are. The act of touching a product increases the probability of purchase if the towel is soft simply because we are much more likely to purchase product that we have tried or tried on. Salespeople implicitly know this: A customer that wants to buy a car without a test drive is not considered a serious buyer based on the salesperson’s experience.

• Return to store

Multi-channel retailers have a fundamental advantage when it comes to returns, because consumers want to return items back to the store. It’s easy and convenient. The can look someone in the eye and get their money back immediately rather than wondering when or whether an online retailer will pay.You can see the importance of this in the Shop.org chart which shows responses when consumers were asked what’s important when shopping online. Returns, support and service are really important. Big box retailers can use this to their advantage. This has also driven Amazon to experiment with return lockers where you can drop off items for return.

• Experiential Retail

For many, a visit to the mall is fun and social. Whether you’re a teenager going to the mall to try on clothes with friends, get a makeover at the cosmetics counter, or visit Toys“R”Us on one of their Lego experience days, these are fun things to do which connect with consumers in an incredibly personal way. This is the future of retail: If people want to go to the mall because it is fun, they’ll go there and shop because the shopping experience is fun.

The challenge for Target and Best Buy (and Walmart which is considering a similar move) is not that they are unaware of the pitfalls of playing on Amazon’s turf, but that the alternatives are fundamentally more challenging. Paying staff basic wages caps the quality of service that can be delivered. Changing staff behavior and developing expertise at the store level to deliver value and service at the point of sale are really, really hard. Business transformation has always been tough, but that doesn’t mean that you should ignore it. Leadership has always been about making the tough decisions.

The future of the mall doesn’t lie in price competition with online business but with building the next generation of retail that enables consumers to experience products and services through their senses, and to connect with knowledgeable, helpful and friendly staff who will delight customers and get them coming back time and again to experience more.

The future mall will probably also have today’s online-only merchants such as Amazon opening stores simply to be able to leverage these innate in-store benefits that are currently closed to them. Perhaps these two groups of retailers, polarized today, will eventually arrive at the same place.

My short answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ because there are really two answers.

Before I explain, let’s take a quick look at why customers abandon shopping carts in the first place and what makes the mobile experience so different. Then we can explore specific techniques for improving the mobile shopping experience.

Why visitors abandon mobile shopping carts

The main reasons customers put items into shopping carts but then don’t complete their purchases are:

• Price

There is a price objection, in particular the cost of shipping and handling, but also the desire to look for a promo code or better deal somewhere else.

• Timing

They are not ready to buy but are putting items in a shopping cart so that they can easily find them when they are ready.

While both of these apply to mobile devices as well, there are three additional factors you need to consider to better understand mobile’s inflated abandonment rate:

1.       Device purpose

Consumers that own a PC, tablet and smart phone, use each device for different things. Take a look at this infographic from the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) — not only does it show you how each device is used at different times of the day, but also for different purposes:

Desktop: The primary purchasing device; safe, secure and stores my information.

Smartphone: Getting up-to-date information on the move; keeping in touch and socializing

Tablet: Browsing and entertainment 

Of course, generalizations are always dangerous and it would be wrong to say that there are no purchases made on smart phones: mobile ecommerce is growing very fast, but from a small base. When it comes to ecommerce on mobile devices, tablets dominate, and overall mobile transactions are 10% of all ecommerce purchases.

This IAB infographic gives more detail on how one mobile shopper uses the different devices.  Standout data points here include:

-  47% of mobile purchases are made at home, probably the majority on a tablet.

-  22% were driven by an ad or email where the product selection process has been made simpler and there’s no extensive researching involved.

This is often driven by retargeting using advertising or email, and leveraging a customer’s past browsing history.

2.       Device Usability

The main reason tablets are used for purchases over smart phones is simple: the screens are larger. Larger fingers don’t mesh well with small touch screen keyboards, as we all know only too well from our own experiences entering passwords.

However, there are practical optimization techniques you can use to make it easier to enter data on mobile devices. For starters, understanding where a customer’s attention goes on mobile devices can help predict better call to action button placement. Looking at this EyeTrackShop graphic, we can see that while each device is slightly different, there is a consistent focus on the top left hand corner.

Don’t forget that devices are used for different purposes and you must factor this into your mobile optimization efforts. For example, if customers are focused on finding store opening hours and locations on their mobiles, then make this information really prominent.

And, if customers are adding items into their mobile carts there’s a good chance they’re saving that purchase for later. So it makes sense to send them a mobile optimized email reminder, with a link back to their cart, that they can use to purchase once back at their PC.

3.       Payments

Mobile payments are a problem, and a significant contributor to the 97% abandonment rate. Creating an account, including shipping and billing addresses, entering all of your payment details and getting it all right first time is far too difficult on a mobile device.

The payment industry is working to address this problem and although there are many contenders for the mobile payments crown, there are few established mobile payment schemes currently.  In the meantime, the only mayor in town is PayPal.

PayPal is a widely adopted payment source with a dedicated login button called Paypal Access that gates all of a customer’s necessary online purchase information behind a quick email and password login. Check it out if you’re looking for a quick solution to smooth out the checkout process for new customers.

For existing customers, if you store credit card information with customer account details (like Amazon.com and Expedia.com) then focus on making the login process as easy as possible.

If neither option currently works for you, I suggest you don’t waste your time trying to optimize the mobile purchase process until there are better payment options available.

Summary

So, let’s go back to the original question: ‘Should you be considering separate mobile device strategies?’

YES: It’s important to have a strategy that at least recognizes that customers aren’t buying on smartphones because their needs when away from their home or office are different. Remember that what will help the most is mobile site optimization focusing on getting key information quickly, such as store locations, prices.

Recognize also that adding an item to a shopping cart is a step toward the purchase process — a signal of intent (so make it easy to do on all devices). And following up with email remarketing will ensure you get the sale, although through a different device. Also, be sure to tailor your email marketing service to trigger a relevant campaign when an abandon happens on a mobile device.

NO: Simply recognizing the reasons that customers aren’t yet ready to buy through mobile devices, difficulty and inconvenience, is enough. Instead of wasting time trying to make the mobile checkout process easier now, wait until mobile payments are expanded.

If you would like to learn more, please join me in partnership with Digital Marketing Company Mediative for the live event, Mobile Abandonment: Getting the Sale, on Thursday, October 18th. We will be discussing how to optimize the mobile shopping experience end to end, and ultimately how to get the sale.

This original version of this blog was written for Media Post as: Shopping Cart Abandonment on Mobile.

*Source: SeeWhy Conversion Academy