We all know that the dangerous part of an iceberg is not the tip but the much larger part that lurks unseen and hidden beneath the surface.
The dangerous part of an e-commerce website is not the shiny and glistening baskets successfully converted into completed sales but the very much larger number of abandoned baskets that are hidden to most e-commerce managers.
But surely abandoned baskets cannot sink an e-commerce website in the same way as the infamous iceberg sank the Titanic? Abandoned baskets are incredibly expensive. By definition they cost the same amount of investment as a successfully completed sale. You have paid for them through online and marketing campaigns to attract the prospective purchaser to your website in the first place.
We could all tolerate a few abandoned baskets from time to time as long as the sales come through. Alarmingly for most websites, abandoned baskets outnumber successful sales and in a lot of cases by an order of magnitude. Our experience is that abandoned basket rates exceed 90% on some e-commerce websites.
As the recession bites and e-commerce website performance comes under pressure not tackling the problem of abandoned baskets may push some websites under.
In terms of pure return on investment, reducing your abandoned basket rate must be a priority for e-commerce managers. It will yield a better return than throwing more money at PPC.
Website analytic vendors are now developing functionality which tracks abandoned baskets. At Maxsi we have recently launched a live website monitoring system called myLivedashboard (myLivedashboard.com) which detects abandoned baskets in real time. It passes details of abandoned baskets to contact centres for immediate follow up. Time is of the essence here as it is likely that the prospective customer is still online and, most importantly, hasn’t gone and purchased elsewhere.
By actively tracking and chasing down abandoned baskets, e-commerce managers can avoid the prospect of going down with their website and sharing the fate of the captain of the Titanic.
