August 19, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Every minute of every day someone somewhere is browsing an online ecommerce store and putting something in their shopping cart. The shopping cart experience varies from store to store and some do a more efficient job than others at turning browsers into buyers. When you open an online store you work very hard to attract users to your site via things like SEO work, social media, affiliate programs, and advertising. After all of this hard work why would you have a shopping cart process where you cannot email a person if they abandon their cart? Surprisingly a recent test performed by e-mail marketing company Listrak found that only 10.5% of the Internet Retailer Top 500 gave online shoppers the chance to retrieve an abandoned shopping cart.
Listrak researchers registered with an e-mail address at 398 of the Internet Retailer Top 500 in June 2009, put an item into their shopping cart, and then exited the site. Only 42 of the retailers sent an email reminder to try and recapture the shopper. Amazingly only 11 sent a reminder within 24 hours. The other 102 sites were unable to be tested for cart abandonment because the online retailers either required a credit card to put items into the shopping cart or did not require an email sign-in. Email address are a valuable commodity to an online retailer and not capturing one before the shopping cart process begins, means that you are missing out on a potential customer. Making the sale is important, but you do not want to ask for a credit card too quick, as most shoppers are not comfortable with that experience, then requesting an email address is a valid alternative. If you are an online store owner or are looking to open one, then you want to make sure you consider a shopping cart with features that attack cart abandonment.
Amy is the co-founder of ZippyCart. She went to school for film in Cleveland, Ohio and ended up working in the field of viral video marketing, which eventually led her to her real profession: SEO. When she's not writing for ZippyCart, she can be found out and about Seattle, WA.
