
The Ins and Outs of the Abandoned Cart - jaybol
http://www.permuto.com/blog/2010/06/17/the-ins-and-outs-of-the-abandoned-cart/
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percept
Cool graphic. It's definitely worth studying, but I disagree with counting the
value of abandoned carts as "lost" revenue.

Instead I think this is a case of the online shopping cart being viewed too
much like its real-world equivalent. Adding items to a cart online may be
closer to bookmarking than to purchasing (another reason is to reveal the cost
of items with hidden pricing, as is practiced on Amazon).

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thwarted
I was experimenting with Amazon's implementation of this recently (having had
to honor lame MAP pricing when I did internet retail websites), and it's
interesting that it's merely behind a click, it doesn't actually add it to the
cart and then have you remove it. The wording is just that it's been added and
is in your cart.

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chwahoo
Some retailers require you to start the checkout process find how how much
shipping (and possibly tax) will cost. When I am shopping around for
something, I'll often go partway through the checkout process just to get a
cost I can compare with other retailers.

Even worse, some retailers (occasionally Amazon) require you to add something
to your cart to see the sale price, which presumably they aren't allowed to
"advertise."

I'd bet that very few of these lost sales are really lost sales. Either some
other retailer got the customer's business or the customer decided not to
purchase from anywhere.

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houseabsolute
Maybe if you'd show me shipping charges when I select the item this would be
less of a problem. Although odds are that just means I won't even add the item
to my cart.

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rick888
most shipping rates are based on where you are located. So the retailer at
least needs to know your zip code before you will get accurate shipping rates

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houseabsolute
Geo lookup for the win.

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rick888
geo lookup isn't that accurate yet (I assume you are talking about geo-IP
lookup).

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pmccool
I've heard of people filling physical carts with (non-perishable) goods and
abandoning them in the store to protest against a supermarket chain. This
makes me wonder whether a similar online tactic might be effective.

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dko
Totally agree with the past comments. This graphic exaggerates the impact of
abandoned carts with misleading conclusions.

In the end, adding items to a cart is no different than viewing an item's page
(imagine the billions lost through "abandoned" page views!).

That said, it's still helpful. Permuto highlights the reasons behind cart
abandonment. It's essentially a list stuff retailers should properly convey to
their customers way before check out.

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jfarmer
This is tangentially related, but when I lived in Palo Alto I'd walk past the
Permuto ("The Shopper Connect Network") offices every day (the corner of
College Ave and Staunton Ct) and always wondered what they did, exactly.

Some sort of B2B e-commerce and analytics company?

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Mistone
agree with comments here that this is not real lost revenue - its mostly
online window shopping - however on your ecommerce retail site we put flat
rate shipping cost on the product page to entice people to buy and give them
that crucial info upfront. also there is a typo on the infographic - it says
US population is 309.5 Billion : )

