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Wholesalers and retailers need to understand the whys and wherefores of shopping cart abandonment to anticipate customer concerns while learning obstacles to order completion and site navigation. This can increase future conversion rates as well as reduce your costs.

Why Customers Leave

Customers leave for various reasons. Common factors include:

• High shipping costs
• Requests for registration
• Requests for personal information prior to checkout
• Complex and cumbersome ordering process
• Malfunctioning shopping carts

Using an Abandonment Survey

What can be done to reduce shopping cart abandonment and improve your online sales? You can use an abandonment survey administered as a Web site pop-up or sent to lost customers via email.
The design and implementation of Web-based point-of-abandonment surveys is less complicated and expensive than many merchants believe.

Possible Questions

You’ll want to create simple, straightforward questions. Below are some questions you might ask:

• Why did you choose not to complete this purchase? This question can be open-ended or include the following options: (1) no intent to purchase, (2) poor user experience, (3) security issues, (4) price, (5) shipping costs, etc.
• What can we do to facilitate the completion of an order on our Web site in the future? Again, this can be open-ended or provide choices such as: (1) improve user interface, (2) improve Web site security, (3) lower shipping costs, (4) provide in-store pickup, etc.
• What is your biggest concern about shopping online? This can be open-ended or provide choices such as: (1) security, (2) online price versus in-store price, etc.
• How frequently do you purchase merchandise online?
• How frequently do you comparison shop online?
• You might also want to inquire about the person’s demographic information, such as city and state, education level, or how he or she heard about your Web site.

Provide an Incentive

You can increase survey response rates by offering the customers who abandoned your shopping cart merchandise discounts to complete the survey. This might also increase the likelihood of a sale.

Review survey results on a regular basis, depending on your level of Web site traffic and the objective of your survey.

First, evaluate each question independently, and then filter results by demographic information to identify specific trends. This kind of feedback can help you understand the pain points and concerns customers have so you can address these issues, revising your Web site strategy and design accordingly. Carefully consider the objective of your surveys before designing the questions, collecting only information that will enable you to better serve your customers.

While ecommerce has been around since the late ‘90s, online sales have grown phenomenally since then with consumers buying big-ticket items like computers, cars and even diamonds online. Does it pay to have a retail location anymore? Yes and no.

U.S. ecommerce sales for 2006 were $108.7 billion, up 25 percent from 2005 (U.S. Census Bureau). The Internet as a retail sales medium is gaining momentum as consumers research online to buy offline, saving time and energy.

Depending on the product/service category, it’s important for retailers to maintain both online and offline locations as consumer MOs migrate from clicks to mortar. However, some product categories can be easily marketed with an online presence alone.

Changing Business Model

Online shopping has changed the traditional retail business model for many product and service categories. It’s important to know what drives consumer choices. For instance, a consumer could spend time on Lowe’s Web site to research a home improvement buy but will likely purchase at the local store. S/he saves time and energy by doing pre-shopping online.

On the other hand, if a consumer wants a book or DVD, s/he will likely go ahead and buy online from Amazon, WalMart or Target. Why waste the time and hassle to drive to a local store for merchandise of that type?

In the case of Lowe’s, the Internet presence sets up the sale, and you get branding with that. For Lowe’s, the Internet is just one more way to attract sales. When it comes to items like books and DVDs, however, the availability of these items online can challenge the necessity of a storefront business – too easy to buy online and too expensive to maintain a physical storefront. That was the ingenuity of Amazon – ship from a warehouse where the rent is cheaper.

Using the Internet Effectively

It’s important for online retailers to use the Internet advantageously, from both the company’s and the consumer’s POV. Make the buying experience cost effective by keeping your shipping charges realistic. I bought a turquoise necklace on eBay recently, and the shipping charge was $5.00, which I thought was high. The necklace was skimpily wrapped, shipped in a jiffy bag, and came damaged. The seller lost the sale, and the return cost me money. I don’t trust eBay now; it’s just not reliable.

Online retailers can deliver goods and services cost-effectively from an online presence by providing quality and superior customer service. Product categories that require physical stores for offline purchase can offer options like in-store pickup, a no-brainer to keep shipping costs down. Think outside the box because you need a competitive advantage. It’s not easy to succeed online, but the rewards are great for savvy marketers.

A happy customer will buy and buy again, in addition to telling others about your site. So why is it that many retail and wholesale sites give customers short shrift when it comes to Web site usability?

There are still many unrealized opportunities in ecommerce, but you have to make it easy for customers to shop when they visit your site. Studies show that online shoppers prefer sites that are easy to navigate, have adequate product information, and a minimum of distractions from ads. Consumer preference data shows that customers look for the following characteristics in a user-friendly site.

Easy Ordering: Provide an efficient checkout process (5 clicks or less).

Prompt Shipping: Provide timely fulfillment, within three to five business days.

Security: Prominently display your security statement and privacy policy along with endorsements from the Better Business Bureau and/or TrustE.

Product Availability and Quantities: Provide clear descriptions of products with information on availability. Provide inventory status notification on product pages and in shopping carts.

Large Variety of Available Products: Customers like variety and prefer not to shop piecemeal at multiple sites for like products. Offer related products and upsells.

Customer Service: Good customer service is a must if you want repeat business. Provide a toll free number with a list of customer service hours and timely email support. Answer all service queries within no more than 48 hours.

Return Policy: Post a clear and concise return policy.

Shipping Charges: Provide shipping charges before the checkout process.

Site Download Times: The faster your download time, the better. Remember, some customers are still on dial up.

Personalized Recommendations: The site that offers personalized recommendations based on past purchases will entice more sales.

Search Function: Make this a top priority. If customers can’t find what they want, they will go elsewhere. You can also utilize this information to optimize your site for better rankings (SEO and PPC), not to mention making it user-friendlier.

Alternate Order Process: Besides your shopping cart, offer a toll-free number for ordering, as well as a printable order form for ordering by fax.

Attractive Home Page: The layout and attractiveness of your home page coupled with all the above can ensure success.

Usability Testing: Test your site on actual users by replicating the experience of the average Web user and correcting problems before your real customers arrive. Assign someone with good people skills and site knowledge to conduct the usability testing sessions. You need to hook up a video camera to record the session, and then ask friends, neighbors and relatives to do the testing. Select people who haven’t visited the site before and those similar to your site’s demographic. These people can give you valuable insights for tweaking. Usability testing will ensure that your site conforms to user expectations, making visitors more comfortable and more likely to become loyal customers.

Retailers and wholesalers can improve merchandising by tracking the products customers search for on the site through internal site search. Currently, two-thirds of the top e-merchants use data from site search tools to improve their ability to offer shoppers more of what they seek. This tactic is sure to increase your visitor-to-sales ratio.

While internal site search functionality is not a priority for marketers, it is very important to consumers. How many times have you had someone you know complain about not being able to find merchandise on a retail site?

Research from MarketingSherpa indicates that consumers go to the site search box before any other navigation tool. However, 52 percent of the marketers surveyed gave themselves poor marks when rating their internal search function.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

You can prevent shopping cart abandonment and eliminate one-time visitors by incorporating an effective site search capability that guides customers along the conversion path. This enhances the user experience by engaging users as they successfully complete their objectives.

Site search provides you with a cache of valuable information as customers leave a trail that tells you how to anticipate their current and future needs. You will also find some new keywords you can use to achieve better organic and paid rankings.

Site Search Data

The data you collect is a valuable marketing resource that helps control your merchandising efforts in driving promotions, cross-sells, up-sells and conversions. Your site search data will also identify products your customers seek but you don’t currently offer, giving you ideas for offering new merchandise.

How to Customize Your Site Search

To provide a good user experience, you need site search, good navigation, and a well-siloed site. This also helps develop the relationship between your brand and the customer. Here’s what you can do to maximize site search.

• Provide easy navigation from your home page to all major product categories and sub-categories
• Provide site search on every page with content that requires more research
• Provide site search on items by brand, price and color.
• Provide site search for featured products in every category.
• Provide site search by brand in every category, as well as for the best sellers in each category.
• Provide site search for sale items

Your upgraded internal search will likely produce more checkouts than you had before because customers would be finding the desired merchandise on the first try. Other benefits will include a boost in performance and revenue, along with increased efficiency for your call centers as call length is reduced and operators can handle more inquiries.

Several eye tracking studies have shown that shoppers are not looking for bells and whistles on ecommerce web sites. Rather, they seem to focus on navigation aids such as the search box and navigation bars.

To prove the validity of these findings, MarketingSherpa conducted a study on a sample of retailer home pages, asking consumers what they do when they visit an ecommerce site. Below are a few tips from this research that can be used by wholesalers and retailers.

Shoppers Want to Cut to the Chase

The first thing shoppers do upon arriving at a retail site is to use the site search box (43 percent) and/or click on useful navigation bars (39 percent). Add these together, and you’ve got 82 percent of your shoppers wanting to cut to the chase to find what they’re looking for. They’re not in the mood to browse.

Usually, only men shop this way. Upon entering the mall, they go into a store on a mission to buy and ignore everything else along the way. Most men will buy an item quickly without much shopping around, get in the checkout line and leave the store. They don’t like to shop and you see very few of them sitting in a chair, waiting for the little woman to try on clothes these days. For men, shopping is a task to done quickly and avoided if possible.

Women, on the other hand, linger at every counter that attracts their attention. Looking over clothing, handling the merchandise and trying on dozens of outfits, women can spend hours in a store without buying a thing. In fact, some women work the department stores and boutiques with no particular goal in mind — shopping is a recreational activity. When it comes to window shopping, this is where the urge to buy can start. That’s why the brands spend so much time on displays, to tempt women who are just looking around.

However, this type of browsing activity just doesn’t happen online, even for women. Maybe it’s because the displays aren’t real, or perhaps the retailers have not yet learned how to design sites that are a pleasure to browse. At any rate, following are some actions that can be taken by retailers to entice more online browsing.

Shoppers Like Easy Navigation

Improve your home page navigation to be functional, accurate and enticing. Make sure your pages load quickly. Label your nav buttons correctly.

Don’t make the mistake of showcasing your brand and corporate image on the home page, that’s the last thing an online shopper is interested in. Shoppers want to find the specific merchandise that is first and foremost on their mind. So if you want sales, design your site with your visitor’s interests in mind, not those of the corporate boardroom.

Give some thought to where your navigational elements are placed. Don’t put them on the edge of the screen or at the bottom of the page. By now, most people will look for nav elements at the top of the page. Make them easily visible and accessible in various places on your home page and category pages. Besides nav bars, you can use hyperlinks on key items throughout the text on the page, bringing visitors to hot merchandise. Talk about the items du jour on your home page and provide a link right in the midst of your content. Make your home page more like a site map with attractive content to increase your conversions.

Shoppers Use Site Search

Site search on a wholesale or retail site is vital. You can’t just put in search functionality and leave it at that. You need to test your landing pages, and when you do, you’ll not only be able to serve your customers better, you can use the customer behavior data to improve your site performance.

Here’s one thing to look out for when you’re testing. Many shoppers make typos or use different nomenclature when searching for merchandise. They might type in coat when they mean blazer or make a typo like blzer. You need to provide links for all possible answers to these searches. Nothing turns shoppers off more than “zero results.”

Entice Shoppers With Category Pages

Category pages are those where shoppers land when they type in a general search term or if they click on a main navigation bar or link. These pages are critical because they can lead to a sale, or not.

While marketers typically concentrate on the design of individual product pages, not many focus attention on the category pages that drive the traffic there. Sometimes category pages are created by default, and the layout is something generic that was never tested for functionality.

So don’t make that mistake and treat your category pages the same as your home page. Concentrate on how to make your category pages easy to navigate. Have as many clickable elements as possible, such as sale hotlinks and dedicated search boxes.

Improve Your Site Conversions

So there you have it, a few simple tips that can help wholesalers and retailers improve site conversions. The heavy lifting was done for you so you don’t have to start testing from scratch and go through trial and error. Just implement some of the above changes and watch your bottom line improve.

Renting an email list can be a challenge because of potential spam issues and damage to your reputation from the use of a bad list. In the past, only about 10 percent of the email list vendors were reputable. Currently, the situation has improved due to marketer demand for cleaner, more targeted lists.

There are thousands of lists to choose from, in every niche under the sun. B2B list rentals are basically reputable, but B2C rentals are less organized and some lists provide low value. However, if you do your homework and choose wisely, you can find yourself some very successful lists. Below are some tips for finding successful rental lists.

List Rental

A list rental refers to the purchase of a third-party email list for one-time use. The vendor (list owner or broker) sends out emails on your behalf, but you provide the creative and subject line. The mailing goes to a list of people who have opted in to receive email offers from the list owner.

When reviewing lists on the market, examine the list data cards displayed on the vendor sites. You never actually see the list of names. The vendor provides you with the number of recipients on various lists, and you can also request a specific number of recipients. You decide on the date and time the mailing will be sent out. You can have the list run against your suppression “Do-not-email” list. Once you provide the creative and specify timing, the list owner sends out the mailing from its server.

If you are doing this for the first time, research to find the best list brokers in your niche and then request some tests, negotiating for the best trial rates. Analytics and metrics are imperative for success in list rentals.

Finding the Right Lists

Before testing a list or renting one, ask for a list of previous list users so you can investigate the type of businesses (brands) that have been successful with specific lists. That way you can judge whether or not this might also work for your brand. Look for known brands repeatedly using a specific list.

In general, you must send several mailings before you start to get good results. Sometimes smaller, more targeted lists work better than larger ones.

Ensure that you rent double opt-in lists (double opt-in requires the list vendor to send a secondary email requiring a response before the name is added to the list. To ensure a list is actually opt-in, you can sign up for the list yourself and see if you get the secondary email activating the subscription.

Average List Costs

Costs vary widely, but targeted consumer lists run from $90 to $160 per thousand names, and the larger, aggregated databases range from $65 to $125 per thousand names.

The B2B, lower-end aggregated small business lists start at $75 per thousand. The higher-end lists targeting controlled circulation publications and targeted at specific groups run as high as $300 per thousand names.

Your Offer

Your offer must be relevant to the subject the list members opted in for or your
message will be deleted and your reputation suffers as well.

Watch for list owners that switch IP addresses. Set up dummy mailboxes to catch junk, and verify the original point of name collection.

Creative That Work

You can’t assume that your top-performing house email creative will test well with a rented list. House emails are normally retention messages, and you need to develop original acquisition creative for your rental list campaigns. It’s tempting to test your best campaign on a rental, but if you do that you may assume that rentals don’t work, whereas it’s the nature of the creative that is not working.

The recipients of rental lists are not in a relationship with you, whereas your house-list customers are. So you need the type of creative that will appeal to brand new customers. Even if you’re a well-known brand, that doesn’t automatically create an email relationship. You must establish the relationship from scratch.

For introductory campaigns, use benefit-driven copy rather than offer-driven copy (which works well with your house list). You need to tell these new recipients who you are. Some might be leery of Internet offers in general so you need to establish credibility. Put an About Us box on your landing page that explains who you are and what you do. Also tell them about your track record. Maybe you have thousands of repeat customers or have been in business since 1990, etc.

Your goal is to establish trust points. If the list owner comes from a high-trust brand, you might say, “As recommended by ZiffDavis” or “Brought to you with permission from ZiffDavis” on your landing page.

List Rental Test Metrics

You can’t know ahead of time about bounces because only the hard bounces are really measurable. For example, 97 percent delivery rates don’t include the number of emails going into filters. Therefore, the only way to accurately assign value to the list is to look at your opens, click-through rates and the percentages of those numbers that are converting to sale in your list rental test.

Remember, there are thousands of email lists on the market, but less than 20 percent are worthwhile, so it’s very important to test. It’s key to use single-source lists.

Ask your list broker how many names on a list should equal 100 clicks. That can help in the test assessment as you can then determine what results meet your criteria.

Even if you run a test for 5,000 names, you can’t always be sure about the trial’s accuracy. That’s because some list owners might deviously send your test campaign to 10,000 in order to raise the response rate and get the buy.

Ask if the list has a recency selection because recency makes a big difference in response rates. Many list owners don’t charge extra for this and only 25 percent of lists offer recency.

Some large list buys can contain names already in your house file. You should be especially wary of paying for those names. Request a sample in order to run a test or have the third-party vendor run a check of your list against theirs. This can help get the price down.

Deliverability and CAN-SPAM Issues

When you use rented lists, you should ask the list owner to run a suppression file. Suppression files remove records from a database that are no longer accurate or current, or names that should be removed due to opt-out requests.

For both CAN-SPAM and branding concerns, you also must ask the list owner to run the database names against your “Do Not Email” file and “Unsubscribe” file.

It’s a good idea to provide two opt-out links with your rented list campaigns: a regular unsubscribe button and a “Do Not Email” option. You must have these mechanisms in place to remove those that do not want to hear from your brand via email.

You must include your physical street address at the bottom of the creative to be in compliance with CAN-SPAM. You also want to request the time/date stamps for all of the rented addresses. This comes in handy if a recipient complains about receiving an email, as you can provide them with a record of when they opted-in. In closing, below are a few specific tips for B2C and B2B list rentals.

B2C Tips

1.    Study all possible demographic segments and values because list owners can try to sell you a lower-valued demo and mark it up. When you overpay, you lose profitability.
2.    Take the time to get at least three to five quotes.
3.    Look for list owners or brokers that don’t email more than twice a week.
4.    You need to know where the addresses originated. Find out where the names were collected, URL-by-URL. Know what topics recipients opted in for.

B2B Tips

1.    Look for highly targeted lists, which are now more available than they were a few years ago.
2.    If you run into a list deal where you have to buy a webinar and a space ad, be aware that arrangements may or may not be in your favor.
3.    Note domain name expirations in the news (publications/vendors/software firms), scraping them from your campaigns.
4.    While selects are still important, don’t forget about source. You can tell a lot about the potential effectiveness of a file by looking at its source.