I tried it once when I was in college I have to admit it made me laugh afterwards. I did it on a dare for a Social Club Rush activity. I went to the Target store on the southern edge of Anderson, Indiana, went all through 20+ aisle’s of the store filling up the shopping cart- and literally for no reason other than to fulfill my bullet point list of annoying tasks- I abandoned my overflowing cart in the middle of the store. Granted, I had no illusions that I would be purchasing the $100+ of items that was in the cart (by 1994 standards)- but to Target it could have represented $100 of sales lost on someone who may not return to buy.
With Black Friday and the whole Christmas corridor coming up, eCommerce marketers will be plugging through all of the headaches consistent with the shopping season with how to get Cyber Monday buyer from abandoning their shopping carts online- and perhaps more importantly, how to get them back to complete purchases they may have abandoned.
The number 1 reason for most online shopping carts to be abandoned is because the consumer was “comparison shopping.” This means that while they are on the site is the easiest time to convert that window shopper to a sale. The goal from this stand point is to make it so the shopper has as few obstacles to the checkout as possible.
Magento has developed a One-Step Checkout extension that simplifies the process for their sites. This extension’s main feature is that it takes the six normal Magento checkout procedures and simplifies it into one. The cart totals are dynamically updated as different options are selected in the checkout process (ie- shipping). All address, payment and delivery methods are selected on the same page as opposed to different pages for each. As Cyber Monday approaches, this figures to be a key tool in reducing your online abandoned shopping carts.