Abandoned SHopping Cats

[donpro]

Hi,

I saw a post somewhere that went like this and I want to know if there is a module that can do similar:

I once received an e-mail from a site (cannot remember which one) it
basically listed the items in my basket & said something like...

"Thank you for visiting our site on ... the following items are still in

your shopping cart. If you come back today & order these items, we will
give you an additional 5% discount on your order.. please use coupon
code.."

I think it is a wonderful marketing tool for people that visit a site &
leave before checkout.

Any idea if such a module (or similar) exists for Miva?

[leslienord]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Check out Bill Weiland's Mail Manager - I think that's the module that was being referred to.

[wcw]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Mail manager sends emails at the conclusion of an order or welcome emails when a new customer signs up. But it does not send emails without some action. There is no action with a basket just sitting there with products in it. The only thing close is the restock shelves module which sends emails as it deletes expired baskets. But he wants to send them to a still existing basket from some date in the past. Baskets expire daily. No module does that. It would have to refill the basket and then send an email.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Bill,

I thought this could be achieved with Restock Shelves module of yours?

[wcw]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

No. Restock shelves deletes the expired basket and sends the email at that same time. There's no way to keep a basket hanging around a few days hoping the customer will come back. They expire per the store settings which is less than 24 hours and most often about 2 hours.

[William Davis]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

I occasionally get similar (abandon basket/cart items) e-mails from Amazon (they got e-retailing down to a science) -very nice.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Well Bill's Restock Shelves module does send the email, it just doesn't save the basket (it would be interesting to see how not saving the basket impacts conversions).

Also check out Runa http://www.mivamerchant.com/partners/strategic/runa/ they have a great system for converting abandoned carts.

[wcw]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Is there some javascript that can tell if a customer goes to a page not in your domain, thus meaning they are leaving. It seems there must be because when I leave some sites I get a popup window trying to get me to come back. It just means an extra click for me to close their new window. If I got an automatic email, I would not be thrilled with that either.

However, I added that automatic email feature based on store owners asking for it (several over time). This past week I got an email from a store owner who had implemented it and within 4 days they got a large return order. So the module pays for itself in a short time. That said, I noticed this is the 4x merchant forum. The automatic send to the customer is only in 5x. In 4x the automatic email goes to the merchant and they can decide if they want to contact the customer. 5x has both emails (merchant and customer).

Bill - I think Amazon keeps the basket for a long time. Miva Merchant has a limit of 24 hours. After that you have to have a module to save the data to another database. I wonder what the drag on Merchant would be if the basket timeout could be longer, e.g. 10 days. Probably wouldn't be able to delete and pack in busy MivaSQL stores.

[William Davis]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Actually Bill, when properly implemented, we have benefit a lot from all these e-mail strategies.

The secret is to primarily focus on the service aspect, and NOT the sale another sale. The promotion is secondary.

For example, Amazon's abandoned basket/cart items e-mail are service oriented.

Something along the lines of (I should have kept the e-mails);

"...we could not help noticing you recently placed the following items in your shopping cart, but did not complete your order..."

"Is there anything we can help you with?"

"We regret any inconvenience you may have experienced while visiting our store, please accept this coupon for x off you next purchase good for x days."

I only wish your 4.x version of Restock Shelves, had this feature.

As far as I am concerned, ALL automated e-mail modules such as these (Restock Shelves, Tell-A-Friend, Follow-on Contact, etc...) quickly pay for themselves well within the first month.

The only problem I have with of these "e-mail" modules, is that some times developers fall a bit short of features:

1. No multipart Support (simultaneous plain text, and html)
2. Not all of developers tokens work on all module's fields (Subject, etc...)
3. No To Alias support (i.e.: To: [email protected], instead of To: John Doe)
4. No conditional statement support:

Dear John:

<IF(%FIRSTNAME% = %FIRSTNAME% THEN Dear %FIRSTNAME%: ELSE )ENDIF>

Dear Friend:

<IF(%FIRSTNAME% = %FIRSTNAME% THEN Dear %FIRSTNAME%: ELSE Friend)ENDIF>

5. Third-party token suppoprt, Top sellers, etc...

I know it sound like nitpicking, but their are legitimate, and PROVEN reasons (from spam in-box filters, to improved conversion rates) for all these features that I have mentioned.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Regarding Restock shelves and basket timeout lengths:

An alternate solution is to set a long basket time out (I thought the max was 48 hours, but maybe I am wrong) and use the emporiumplus.com Lost and Found Orders module.

Then you can write up an email by hand, and link directly to the Basket page (or the OINF page). As long as they check their email and click the link before therir basket expires, they should be able to complete the order with little hassle.

Since this is somewhat labor intensive (you have to check by hand and compose an email by hand), it would obviously work best on sites with higher priced items that cater to a lesser number of customers.

also, you have to weigh the benefits of having a long basket time out versus items being out of stock for that long a time period (until you manually delete expired baskets).

And while I can understand that the service aspect that Bill Davis mentioned is very important, I have found that offering an automatic discount is also very helpful.

What I have done is used Viking Coders Affiliate Manager to set up a "fake" affiliate. No one gets a commission, but the visitor who uses that affiliate gets a 10% discount off their purchase.

so when I link to the basket page (or whatever page I decide to link to), I include the affiliate code that generates the 10% discount.

You could do this with with a coupon module as well. However, the affiliate manager way of doing this means the customer DOESN'T have to remember the coupon code and doesn't have to type it in. Just by clicking a link with that particular affiliate code in it, the customer will have a 10% discount applied automatically during the checkout.

Plus, with some conditional statements which check if they are using that particular affiliate link, you can put something in the global header of your site saying that they are getting the VIP 10% discount.

Again, not an AUTOMATED solution, but a good alternative.

Hope this helps.

[William Davis]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

You also may want to try www.ClickTale.com (it actually records users every mouse moments, its like if you were video taping visitors every single move), we have been using the paid version for a month now -its great.

We have gathered so much useful information about our website to improve visitors experience, conversions, and yes we found several unknown problems that have always existed that we were not aware of.

I highly recommend all merchants that are truly commited to their business to try the free version. After a few days you will realize how truly useful this tool is.

[1873Peacemaker]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Check out RUNA which is an abandoned cart conversion product and was a topic for a webinar with Rick Wilson and Chuck Lasker as moderators a couple months ago as part of Chuck's advanced tutorials (i think). It works with Miva Merchant. We have installed it in our dev Miva 5 store but have no results as our dev site has not gone live yet. I found your post searching to see if anyone here in the forum is using it and to see what kind of feedback people might have. http://runa.com/

[William Davis]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Check out RUNA which is an abandoned cart conversion product and was a topic for a webinar with Rick Wilson and Chuck Lasker as moderators a couple months ago as part of Chuck's advanced tutorials (i think). It works with Miva Merchant. We have installed it in our dev Miva 5 store but have no results as our dev site has not gone live yet. I found your post searching to see if anyone here in the forum is using it and to see what kind of feedback people might have. http://runa.com/

RUNA is a very good idea, but when I last check when it first came out it only worked on MM5.5, and no plans for MM4 platform.

[1873Peacemaker]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Yes, you are right and sorry - I didn't realize you were running 4.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Despite the fact that it is only for Merchant 5.5, what exactly does RUNA do??? Does it survey people who exit your site in the middle of a conversion? Does it offer them a "special price" if they start to leave? couldn't quite tell from their site exactly.