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How popular is online
shopping? And is there room for
improvement? Let’s check
out some pros and cons of automated
shopping and see.
Digital carts offer
convenience for people around the globe 24
hours a day. Yet an
estimated 4 percent of shoppers make
purchases, up from 3.5
percent in 2003, reported by DoubleClick,
an online marketing
company.
And approximately 30
percent of shopping carts are abandoned,
according to recent surveys
by BizRate.com, a shopping search
engine.
The main reasons for
shopping cart abandonment are*:
· High shipping prices (72%)
· Comparison shopping or browsing (61%)
· Changed mind (56%)
· Saving items for later purchase (51%)
· Total cost of items is too high (43%)
· Checkout process is too long (41%)
· Checkout requires too much personal information (35%)
· Site requires registration before purchase (34%)
· Site is unstable or unreliable (31%)
· Checkout process is confusing (27%)
To decrease shopping cart
abandonment and increase sales, simple
minor improvements in
automation can be highly effective. Here
are some tips that work
best for clients and workers alike of
OhioHelp.net, an Ohio-based
company that specializes in helping
businesses worldwide with
their marketing, public relations and
freelance writing services.
TOP TIPS FROM OHIOHELP.NET
1. Calculate all handling charges and fees in with your price
whenever possible, so that
you can offer no-cost shipping. And
check for specials like
Flat Rate packages with Priority
Shipping.
2. Don’t have people pre-register, fill out lengthy forms, wait
for email confirmation,
find their password / user ID and figure
out how to log in again and
continue to fill out more detailed
forms and click through a
half-dozen pages. Ugh! People want to
shop, buy and go. Period.
3. On EVERY page of your site, shopping cart, receipt and Thank
You or other automated
reply, list complete contact information.
Include a specific person
to follow up with, business phone
number and postal address
(no P.O. Box) and a direct email
address like diana@ohiohelp.net (i.e. not info@ohiohelp.net
).
Then if the Internet
connection fails, the site goes down or any
number of other technical
issues occurs, the shopper immediately
has concrete information
for follow up.
4. Set your product order numbers at one (1). In other words,
when someone clicks a
purchase button, have the cart say one (1)
item purchased when they
preview their cart instead of zero,
making them select “1”
again.
5. Include a no-cost gift in the shopping cart, with the
receipt
or in the Thank You email,
especially with large purchases. Let
your customers know you
appreciate their business. And ask for
referrals!
6. Test special product and package prices with offers on a
“Thank You” page or with a
“Thank You” email.
7. Accept multiple payment options when possible; credit cards,
faxed and telephone orders,
print checks, money orders, echecks
and 3rd party solutions
like Paypal. Note: many businesses use
American Express.
8. Choose a progressive shopping cart software solution like
ProfitAuto at http://presssuccess.com/AutoPilot for a variety of
services, pricing packages
and options for company growth.
ProfitAuto manages not only
the cart but also your leads,
contacts and shoppers with
automated “Thank You” follow up. It
also has autoresponders for
pre-sale and after-sale
communications, digital
tracking and delivery solutions,
importing / exporting of
lists and autoresponder series,
electronic coupons,
affiliate programs and more.
NO-COST TRIAL AND
INFORMATION
For a 30-day no-cost trial
of ProfitAuto, sign up online at
http://presssuccess.com/AutoPilot . And download ebooks with
loads of information to
help with your business from the
“Freebies” section of the
OhioHelp.net bookstore at
http://www.presssuccess.com/bookstore
So tweak your checkout
process. Make your clients and your
company happy. And ring up
more sales. To learn more top tips and
receive them on a regular
basis at no charge in your email, sign
up at http://ohiohelp.net today or email diana@ohiohelp.net
.
* From research (Fall,
2001) by Vividence Corporation,
specializing in Customer
Experience Management (CEM) products and
services.
------
By Diana Barnum, president
of
http://movingaheadcommunications.com
and CEO of
http://ohiohelp.net . For more help with marketing, public
relations and writing,
email diana@ohiohelp.net or call:
614)529-9459.