Abandoned SHopping Cats

[wajake41]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Hi Bill: Thanks for your response.
I was astonished when I saw that we had 64,000 plus rows in our Basket table. I've purged it via the Admin process and intend to do this on a regular basis in the future.

Thanks again, Larry

[wcw]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

1) The basket table contains the basket ID and customer info if they got as far as checkout (need not create an account). Related tables such as basketitems, basketoptions, and basketcharges contain specific data like products and attributes, shipping selection, discounts or coupons redeemed, etc.
2) Let them know the benefits of registering, e.g. do you use price groups, give coupons, etc.
3) You should delete expired baskets (from admin manually or using a module automatically) at least daily. Accessing and doing a lookup in a table with 64627 rows every time a page is displayed takes processing power.
4) Yes.

You can use a module like Restock Shelves to automatically delete the expired baskets at a regular frequency, e.g. every two hours. It also gives you a report of abandoned baskets vs sales for any time period. And in response to what you were thinking above, the report will contain the names and products in the basket for those who abandoned and got as far as checkout to fill in their names. When you update your store to Merchant 5x, the Restock Shelves module can even send those customers an email automatically in which you can try to recapture the sale. It can be used in conjunction with a coupon module in 5x. See http://www.emporiumplus.com/go/wcw/PROD/1AA/1AA00067 for more details.

[wajake41]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Hello forum: Hope this is not off-topic too much.
I thought the idea raised in this thread was a good one and maybe we should consided it ourselves, so decided to look at our databases.

We are hosted by Hostasdaurus. A query of table s01_Basket on our site shows 64627 rows. A query for rows where cust_id != 0 returns 22 rows. This raises some questions for me regarding this table and the possibility of contacting shoppers with abandoned baskets:
1. What data does the table maintain?
2. It appears almost no one is registering on our site. How can that be changed?
3. Should we be purging the rows from this (and our other tables) on a regular basis?
4. Is this the correct table to find abandoned carts?

Thanks, Larry

[netblazon]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

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[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

Thank You, Rick!

Mark

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

It's more complex than that, but yes in it's simplest form, when someone leaves your site it makes them some sort of special offer, either a discount or free shipping or what not.

What makes it unique is the special offers are calculated on the fly based on buyer behavior on your site and they provide very detailed analytics to show total abandoned carts, how many got an offer (you set those parameters) and what the recapture rate is. In addition they notice that it also seems to increase sales by a group who come back within the hour and buy at full price.

They seem to be increasing bottom line profit between 20 - 50% on the stores they're running on.

[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.

[1873Peacemaker]

Re: Abandoned SHopping Cats

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

[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

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

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.

[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

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.

[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.

[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.