Shopping Cart Abandonment

An “abandoned shopping cart” happens when an online shopper adds items to their cart, then decides to just close their browser or go somewhere else.  It happens to every site at some time or another for various reasons, most of which are preventable.  To help minimize abandonment, there are steps you can take to ensure that your shoppers will see your checkout procedure through to order fulfillment.

Think of your online checkout process like a traditional brick and mortar store.  In a physical store, shoppers browse the aisles to locate the products they want to purchase.  When they find one it is placed in their metal cart.  At this point there is no commitment to actually buy the items in their cart.  If they see something they don’t like, they can simply park the cart where it sits and walk out of the store.  Most brick and mortar stores have an advantage over e-commerce because the customer is physically in their building.  The shoppers had to walk or drive to the building, and most are already certain of the items they want to buy.  Online storefront shoppers don’t have to do anything except turn on their computers and type in your store’s website address or find your online shop on a search engine.  Abandoning an online cart is very easy to do so your storefront should take extra precautions to make the shopper feel comfortable and safe.

The first thing to do if you haven’t already is purchase an SSL certificate.  SSL, or Secure Socket Layering, is a protocol that web browsers use to give the assurance that the data being transmitted from the shopper’s computer is encrypted, making it illegible to anyone who might intercept it.  SSL is what gives websites the httpS:// instead of just http://.   SSL certificates are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased from vendors like GeoTrust, Verisign, Thawte or GoDaddy.  After installing an SSL certificate, most vendors provide a “site seal” which is usually a tag that can be inserted into your website to show that your store is secured.  If you have SSL installed but don’t have your seal displayed on every page, then go do that now!  It sends a clear message to your customers that you are aware of Internet security and have taken an extra step to protect their private information.

When you need help or have questions while shopping in a physical storefront, it is nice to be able to ask a smiling, friendly employee to guide you to what you are looking for.  People that shop online expect a level of customer support comparable to what they would receive in person.  If there is no way to contact a representative then how is the customer supposed to know that your store is still accepting orders?  There are many eCommerce web sites that were created and then forgotten.  At the very least your online presence should not feel like no one is home.  Post your 800 number prominently on every page of your site.  Have an “About Us” page that details your physical mailing address so the customer knows that they are dealing with a real business.  There are also online Help Desk packages available ranging in price from free to a few hundred dollars that gives the customer a direct line straight to you!  Using an online chat or help desk, if someone has a question they don’t have to even pick up the phone.  A small piece of software on your computer will tell you when someone needs to chat.  Having a real person available can make a huge difference if someone is on the fence about their purchase.

Keep your checkout process simple.  This point can’t be stressed enough!  Don’t make your customer fill out a form with so many fields that they feel like they are applying for a bank loan.  Filling out a long form online is comparable to waiting in a long line at a physical storefront’s checkout.  Get the information you need to fulfill the order and to contact them with confirmation information or if there is a problem.  A short checkout process gives the shopper less time to close the browser window.  Offer the customer a Guest checkout, or checkout with creating an account.  If your customer likes your store then they’ll create one, so don’t make it mandatory.

Showing your customers that you care about their privacy and security is key to stopping shopping cart abandonment.  A shopper must trust your online storefront.  There are services that can offer your customers some peace of mind when shopping online.  McAfee offers a badge that your store can display that shows you have someone on the outside verifying that your store is safe from hackers.  They do this by scanning your site every day for vulnerabilities, similar to how a virus scanner checks your local computer for problems.  The result of the scan is displayed on your website along with the last date of the scan.  It is updated daily which shows that your online shop is safe and secure.

Here are a few more credibility indicator tips that will give your shoppers more confidence while browsing:

Check your grammar and spelling!  A poorly worded sales pitch or a simple spelling mistake can give the impression that you don’t care about what you are trying to get the customer to buy.

“If I have a problem, can I return the item?”  This question should be answered as soon as someone visits your store.  A clearly labeled Return Policy link with clear and concise information will help put the shopper’s mind at ease.

Be sure to have a product review section on each product page.  Don’t make the mistake of faking reviews.  It might look good to see positive reviews but your customers are no dummies!  Authentic positive reviews from real customers will go a long way to building trust in your store.  Offer some kind of incentive to get customers to post reviews on products they have purchased.  A follow up a few days later is a great way to build trust and open a line of communication.

Keep your website simple.  Don’t complicate your site with loads of graphics and animations to get people’s attention.  Remember that the shopper is already on your website so you don’t need anything else to bring them in.  Instead, make their shopping experience enjoyable by providing a straightforward and easy to navigate website.

Comparing some aspects of physical storefront shopping to online shopping can give a different perspective on what the shopper expects from their online shopping experience.  There’s no way to stop all instances of shopping cart abandonment, but it can be reduced by following the advice that we have provided.  If you haven’t at least added everything in this article to your eCommerce website then go do it as soon as possible.  You may be missing out on sales over a simple mistake that your competitor didn’t make!

Applying SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices to your Magento Shopping Cart is a great way to take advantage of an already search engine friendly eCommerce system.  Although SEO is a continuous process of endless number crunching, keyword analysis, and overall website refinement, ensuring that your title tags are configured properly is a good start.

Default Title Tag  Configuration

If your Magento store is still using the default title “Magento Commerce” then this change is for you! To make this change go to Configuration -> Design -> HTML Head. Make sure this title describes your store and is short and precise.

If you want your store name on all product pages add it to the Title Suffix field on the HTML Head admin page. Make sure you choose Title Suffix because the product keyword carries the most weight and you want the search engines read them first.

Magento  Page Titles

Category titles should be short and in the same type of language that a customer would use to search for the the types of products in the category. This is where some keyword research will come in handy. Putting your store name in the title is unnecessary if you chose to have it show in the suffix of all titles in the default configuration.

To ensure your product page titles are optimized correctly make sure your product names are short and accurately describe what is being sold. Remember, you don’t need to include your store name if you already added it to the Title Suffix Field.

Although the importance of meta tags and title tags have diminished over the years, they still play a major role in how your Magento store will appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). Failing to configure them properly can dramatically effect your website’s traffic and chances of online success. By configuring them properly your Magento store has an edge over the competition and a better chance of being found by customers who are looking for you.

eCommerce is much more than just getting people to your site. While traffic is unarguably an important aspect to internet marketing, getting viewers to purchase from your store is equally important. Here is a list of 10 basic features* your store should encompass to encourage viewers to not only make a purchase but engage in a long-lasting relationship with your store. (*Gartner)

1) Product information should be easy to read, detailed, and promote the best features of the item.

2) Your return policy should be clearly marked, easy to find and interpret.

3) Every page of your website should load quickly. This includes not only the main pages but every page a customer engages through checkout.

4) Product reviews from other customers should be displayed with every item. Product reviews really set eCommerce stores apart from their brick and mortar cousins. Leverage this difference and include product reviews throughout your store to encourage and reassure customers while they shop.

5) Multiple product images or  3d rotators should company every product. Customers like to know what they are buying and clear multiple or 3d images of products do just that.

6) If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video must be priceless.Video of your products included in the description is marketing gold. Viewers feel more connected to video and better informed. Video also offers other marketing venues such as YouTube, video search and more.

7) Online Chat assistance is a great way to bridge the personal connection gap that plague online retailers. Nothing is more reassuring to the customer than knowing that help from a real live person is only a mouse-click away.

8 ) Related products should be displayed with every item. This not only helps you increase sales but helps fill the need for the shopper.

9) Easy and quick checkout is a must. Laborious and slow checkout systems are the culprit for many abandoned shopping carts. Minimize the risk and maximize your customer satisfaction with  a one page checkout system or similar system.

10) Many shoppers don’t want to sign up to your eCommerece system. Cater to these customers by allowing them to make purchases a a guest. If you make them happy with the first purchase they might come back, sign up, and become lifelong customers.

Implementing these listed features  will put you on the the right track to increase customer retention, loyalty, and overall satisfaction. If your eCommerce shopping cart is falling short of this list please contact us to learn more on how InteractOne can get you back on track.

Having the ability to checkout on a single page greatly increases your Magento shopping cart’s conversion ratio and your customer’s overall shopping experience.  It does this by simplifying the checkout process thus lowering the amount of time it requires to make a purchase. Just a year ago this would have taken special programming and often would leave your site open to hacks.  This has all changed with the explosion of Magento extensions.

The Magento extension we recommend for one page checkout would be Quick One Page Checkout by Kam Technology.

This extension has went through a lot of real-world testing and helps improve customer satisfaction and conversions without sacrificing security or safety.  Quick One Page Checkout integrates seamlessly into your existing Magento.

Quick One Page Checkout by Kam Technology is a Magento extension that should not be passed by. Speed has proven to be a major factor in how people perceive your site. Maximize your customer’s experience and get this extension installed today.

London UK – 19 April 2010. Profile Wines, a UK based online wine retailer recently launched their new website developed by InteractOne. Built on the Magento community platform, Profile Wines seeks to build a community of Wine lovers who actively participate in an ongoing discussion about their favorite wines.

Enhanced shop by attributes functionality, rating systems and feedback design were implemented towards this goal. A clean and classic design was chosen to support the Profile Wines brand image as well enable shoppers to easily navigate the great selection of Wines.

Hosted on InteractOne’s Ecommerce cluster, Profile Wines is able to achieve top performance load times even during peak load times. Given the great response since launching, Profile Wines is committed to increasing their web community through partnering with InteractOne to further their social, organic and direct marketing efforts.

Visit Site: ProfileWines.com

Imagine for moment you’ve decided to open a brick and mortar retail shop.

Think of the steps you would take in order to launch the store and drive new sales:

Initiating a Magento Shopping Cart is much the same.  You must Develop:

• Target Market
• Branding – Logo and Message
• Product Mix (inventory)
• Pricing
• Promotion

The great thing about Magento is that is very flexible and powerful, helping online retailers specifically tailor their Branding, Product Mix, Pricing and Promotion to suite their Target Market.

A problem many Magento Store owners have, however, is they don’t fully understand the the power and flexibility of Magento’s selling tools.  Because Magento’s administration interface is so flexible and powerful it maintains a relatively steep learning curve with little formalized training resources.

That is why at InteractOne we offer easy-to-understand product support and training for Magento store owners.  Whether your a newby or experienced Magento administrator we can help you fully understand and take advantage of Magento’s powerful selling tools.

Contact Us today receive more information about our Magento Support and Training programs.

Using a chat service on your website is a great way to engage your customers and to increase conversions. This is especially true for eCommerce sites like Magento and osCommerce which can offer an array of products to consumers, many of them comparison shopping and looking to learn more about certain items. By answering their specific questions about certain products or services you can expedite the purchasing process, leave customers with a positive shopping experience and offer a more personal connection with your brand.

At InteractOne we use Kayako’s Live Response, which has not only provided us with a more personal connection to potential clients but also gives us information on how they found our website, what pages they have viewed and for how long. It also gives the viewer and us the option to initiate a chat.

Studies into the effectiveness of such a chat service show the benefits of adopting such a system. In a recent article in Website Magazine the numbers are eye-opening. The survey, conducted by Bold Software, stated  “56 percent reported that live chat technology” positively influenced their customers to make a purchase. This number shoots to 65 percent for the Hardware/Home Improvement marketplace and 63 percent for the Health/Beauty marketplace.

Adopting a chat service is a great way to bridge the personal connection gap that many e-tailers experience. Contact InteractOne today to add a chat service to the bag of tools your website uses to connect with your customers.

When a customer sets up an account, purchases a product, changes their password, or registers for a newsletter at your Magento store they are automatically sent emails notifying and documenting the interaction/transaction. For first time installs it is paramount that you customize these emails so your customers are not sending emails to your customers with the Magento logo and dummy contact info. If you have ftp access and a HTML editor like Dreamweaver the process will go quicker but these tools are not absolutely necessary. The process to match the design of your  email templates from your Magento Store Design is a simple process and is laid out below.

A) With FTP you can locate these files at:

/httpdocs/app/locale/en_US/template/email
*don’t forget the sales folder also

-With your HTML editor do a mass find and place with the logo image and dummy contact info with your own.

B) If you don’t have FTP access or just completed step a,  log into your Magento admin panel and go to:

System—>Transactional Emails

-Add new template
-Select default template to load (I suggest going through all of them one at a time)
-Load template and edit contact info and dummy contact information if you haven’t done so yet. You can also customize the template to your liking here. Just be careful not to get rid of the critical Magento calls that control the dynamic content in the email (ex. {{htmlescape var=$customer.name}})
-Save template under new name (I recommend using the same name)
-make sure to preview all templates and format accordingly

C) Load your customized email templates in your Magento Admin Panel at:

System—>Configuration

-Go through the left nav options and add your new email template to associated areas

As always test the system and make sure everything is formatted correctly and you married the correct email template with the corresponding action.  If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Static blocks are a Magento feature that makes adding content to your Magento site easy and convenient. Static blocks allow for your Magento site to be updated via the admin panel making it faster than having to “hard-code” every time you need to make a change to your website. Static blocks can be used anywhere on your Magento site to display text, images, & navigation.  Some Magento designs have static blocks already in place for your convenience; however, you might have to install them yourself. Below is a simple tutorial on how to install a static block in the footer of your Magento site

Step One: Create Static Block in Your Magento Admin

Magento Admin Panel—>Static Blocks—>Add New Block

1) Name your Static Block, in this case Custom footer Links

2) Label the Identifier (This is the link you will use to call the block later) in this case, custom-footer-links

3) Choose what store view you would like it to render in

4) Set Status to Enabled

2)Now for the fun part! Add your navigation links to the block.   Make sure to use <style> to make them match your sites color and theme.

Step Two: Inserting Code to Call the Static Block

This part is going to require you to FTP into your Magento site and modify footer.phtml
app—>design—>frontend—->default—>(your template)—>template—>page—>footer.phtml

Find where in the footer you want your navigation links to display and insert:
<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock(‘cms/block’)->setBlockId(‘custom-footer-links’)->toHtml(); ?>

Now most of the time the Static block should display just fine but in some cases you are going to have do some extra steps to have the block display.

1) Instead of inserting:
<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock(‘cms/block’)->setBlockId(‘custom-footer-links’)->toHtml(); ?>

Use:

<reference name=”left”>
<block type=”cms/block” name=”left.permanent.callout”>
<action method=”setBlockId”><block_id>custom-footer-links</block_id>
</action>
</block>
</reference>

2)Modify catalog.xml
app—>design—>frontend—>default—>f002—>layout—>catalog.xml

Add under <!– Mage_Catalog –>

<block type=”cms/block” name=”left.permanent.callout”>
<action method=”setBlockId”><block_id>custom-footer-links</block_id>
</action>
</block>

And voila! Your Static Blocks should be displaying and easily accessible through Your Magento Admin panel. Remember Static Blocks can be inserted just about anywhere in your Magento site and are a great feature to use when content needs to be updated frequently. If you have any comments or suggestions on Magento Static Blocks feel free to leave them below.

Looking for an eCommerce shopping cart that will meet the needs of your business and stay within your budget can seem overwhelming at first. Shopping around to find the right solution can be a daunting task.   Wading through the seemingly endless varieties of shopping cart packages can take many hours and can be very frustrating!   Each company boasts that their system is the right one for you so determining which platform to run your eCommerce business requires time and patience.  Here are some points to keep in mind when purchasing an eCommerce shopping cart system.

Easy To Use Interface
The interface should be easy to use and understand for both you and the customer. Any eCommerce system worth its salt should be able to import products from an excel sheet, organize them into categories and track inventory.  Writing descriptions and modifying products should not be a difficult task.
On the consumer end, your eCommerce shopping cart should be easy to navigate and the checkout process must be simple and secure. Your products should also be categorized and displayed in a logical and intuitive way.

Search Engine Friendly
If people can’t find your eCommerce site then you’re not going to make any sales. Clean code and the ability modify URLs and header tags should be standard.  Your website’s loading speed must be fast and without any lag.  Lag is any noticeable delay that the user experiences when accessing your website.

Analytics and Reporting
A good eCommerce system will have the ability to track traffic, search queries, shopping cart abandonment, most viewed items and have automated sale reports. Knowing who is coming to your site, what they’re buying, their likes and dislikes, and how they are finding you can go a long way in shaping your marketing strategy.

Marketing Promotions and Tools
Promoting products, offering an email or newsletter sign-up, free shipping options and up-sells are a few features a shopping cart are the features of a superior shopping cart. Getting the customer to the site is only half the battle!  Encouraging them to purchase items is a lot easier if your eCommerce system is equipped with the ability to promote your products.

These are just a few pointers and suggestions when looking for an eCommerce system.  Here at InteractOne, we offer Magento eCommerce and osCommerce shopping cart solutions. If you are interested in either system for your business please contact us to learn more!