Get our RSS feed
Search BizReport
News by Topic
Marketing
- Advertising
- Search Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Loyalty Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Social Marketing
- Viral Marketing
- Trends & Ideas
- Internet Marketing 101
Beyond Marketing
BizReport : Ecommerce : May 06, 2009
Are you tracking website abandonment? Few are.
In order in increase conversions and grow sales, online retailers need to know the reason why some consumers abandon their website, whether or not they visit a shopping-cart page.
While several technologies exist that address the issue of shopping-cart abandonment, few pay attention to those occasions where abandonment occurs prior to this stage, i.e. while form filling or browsing products. This is an important area for marketers to scrutinize, because while the average shopping-cart abandonment rate is around 60% to 70%, the average storefont converts just 1% to 2%, according to eWayDirect.
Even so, while identifying and engaging with those who walk away could net retailers an additional 10% income, very few marketers go after them. "Statistics today demonstrate that only 17% of companies follow up on website abandonment at all and only 9% within 24 hours," according to website conversion company, SeeWhy.com.
"And based on an average, medium-sized ecommerce company with revenues of $200M per annum and a shopping cart abandonment rate of 50%, these sites lose $10 every second to abandonment."
Charles Nicholls, founder of SeeWhy.com, recently announced a free service, "Abandonment Tracker Free", which he claims can convert up to 30% of "abandoners".
The SaaS product alerts marketers to abandonment statistics as well as providing them with a list of abandoners in the previous 24 hours, when and where they abandoned the website, their product interest and email address.
Tags: conversion, online retailers, revenue, sales, SeeWhy.com, shopping-cart abandonment, tracking, website abandonment
Subscribe to BizReport
Please enter your e-mail here:
Latest Headlines
- U.K. mobile Internet users spend 2.2 billion minutes on Facebook in one month
- MMA: Good news for m-commerce, consumer comfort with mobile banking on increase
- U.S. teens texting ten times per hour
- Report: Aussies spending more time online in the same places
- Brand Keys: This is the decade of brand
- BET: African-Americans are tech influencers
- Online shoppers to spend more than offline this Valentine's Day
- Report: 75% of Super Bowl viewers visited advertiser websites
Comments
Part of the reason why few marketers track transaction abandonment is because it is a sleazy practice and the thought sickens them. Whatever the reason is, all users who terminate a transaction believe that the company does not collect information unless they complete the transaction. They may expect that they may have items in their cart but this is a new low. An ethical way to pursue conversion is to launch a script when the user terminates that launches an "Are you sure?" pop-up. As an information security professional, I thank e-commerce sites who use a combination of poor security with an obsession to collect information for giving me so much business. 'Vulture-ware' has potential to peak interest not only to security evangelists but also the hacker community. Just a reminder to siteowners without scruples, if you collect it, you MUST protect it. This includes downstream use. As a customer, if I discover that my information that I 'submitted' without my consent was compromised, I think I will have a good legal case. See you in court :)
Posted by: Eric Jernigan on July 31, 2009 21:10