Have you ever wondered what an ecommerce checkout would look like in real life? Would you keep going to your local shop if you had to answer 15 questions at the till before you can actually leave with your products?
Take a look at this video….
E-commerce has been in our life for about 15 years, for some of us it’s become a habit. I’m one of those – I buy everything online, from clothes to food. As an online addict, in my twenties and a former e-marketer, checking out is child’s play to me. BAD news is I’m probably not your standard customer (don’t worry I’ll have a good news for you at the end of this post).
One of the first things I’ve learnt in marketing is never to think that your way is the common way. For example I still don’t understand why the heck supermarkets keep sending me flyers saying that this weekend the lamb roast will be 50p cheaper than usual. Honestly, I’ve never rushed to my local store after reading one of those flyers thinking ‘Yay!!! I’m gonna save 50p, this is amazing!’’. And I probably never will. I will keep ignoring these ads, thinking they’ve just wasted a lot of paper and ink.
However it’s a fact that it works, and I might just be one of the small percentage that does not respond in any way to this kind of trigger. My point here is: make sure you’re not losing customers along the way; you might think it’s easy as pie, while your prospects think they require an IT degree before trying to check out on your website. How to do so? Firstly, identify at which stage in your check out process you are losing your prospects. Your website analytics will help you spot the customer leak. Then try to find out why. Ask yourself the following:
• Is there a technical issue? Test the rendering on every possible browser, zoom in and out, try to break it and see how it goes.
• Is the wording unclear? Carefully check all the wording you use and make sure a 2 year old could understand the meaning.
• Is the call-to-action obvious? The last thing you want is your prospect to get lost. It’s really frustrating not to know what to do next or to have to scroll for half an hour before finding the ‘next’ button.
• Could my customer be distracted? Make sure your check out process is a tunnel with nothing else that could distract your customer from finalising his/her order.
• Am I scaring my prospect? Buying online is still stressful for a lot of people so reassure them at every single step. A telephone number on your check out pages will undoubtedly help increase your conversion rate.
Following those points should help you to reduce your abandoned transaction rate. Unfortunately nothing will make it disappear but… here comes the GOOD news! Email marketing can help you get your customer back in their buying shoes.
Let me introduce you to the ‘abandoned shopping cart’ module from Emarsys. One of my favourite transactional emails. When the system notices your customer has left your website without finalising the transaction, it will automatically send a personalised email to your customer. Think about it, maybe your customer just momentarily forgot about you – maybe the phone rang in the middle of checking out, or the food on the stove started to burn, or the baby started crying, or the neighbour knocked on the door… so many things could’ve happened.
Don’t miss an opportunity to remind your customer how much they wanted to buy your product and what a shame it is they didn’t make it to the finishing line. Fix that leak, get in touch with your Emarsys account manager to set it up today!
