

How To Recover the 97% Of Carts Abandoned In Mobile Shopping Apps - kunle
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ayoomojola/2013/09/05/how-to-recover-the-97-of-carts-abandoned-in-mobile-shopping-apps/

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joezydeco
So will the % of abandoned carts _increase_ when people discover they can earn
extra perks by always dropping the order?

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svmegatron
Agreed, giving a discount or other reward for recovering an abandoned cart is
a VERY dangerous road to go down IMO.

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umsm
I am not sure I agree. Many major online retailers do this and are very
successful. Promotions can be site-wide or category sales, individual items,
certain brands, offering mail-in-rebates, etc.

Done right, it is wildly successful.

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andmarios
Always nice to see a fresh term for “spamming your potential customers”.

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bigtech
Some sites force you to add an item to the cart in order to see the price -- I
can understand how 97% are abandoned if these are included.

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kunle
Agreed - bad practice. Not advocating that in the least.

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benjamincburns
I'm sorry for such an awful (but accurate) pun, but this seems like a bit of a
_pushy_ sales tactic. I personally run away from businesses that use tactics
such as these.

Please, don't do what this article suggests.

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fennecfoxen
AKA How to get users to deny your application's request to send push
notifications.

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chuckwnelson
I installed the Gilt app mentioned in the article. Push notifications and
emails almost everyday.

This is exactly how you get me to deny the request for push notifications.

This will be true until the end of time: be useful to your customer, not
spammy.

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kunle
Understood - for flash sales though, a large portion of the demand is driven
by the fact that the items are only available in limited quantities. As a
result these pushes generate huge spikes of traffic - it's spammy if you don't
care that the selection quickly shrinks, but if you're a compulsive shopper
(true for a large swath of the shopping population) then you depend on it.

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Pxtl
Wait, people actually install apps to shop? Every time I've used a store app
I've found it inferior to their mobile website which was, in turn, inferior to
their full website.

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kunle
Agreed. The apps are getting better though (and have to - a lot of businesses
are seeing 30 - 50% of usage/revenue coming via mobile). It's not a preference
for businesses because they've spent a decade investing in the web and now
mobile is coming along, but its driven by end users. If you don't adapt, your
competitors will, and they'll eat your lunch as a result.

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maxk42
Oh HELL NO. If you push a notification to my device after I walk out of the
sales process I am uninstalling your app immediately and rating you 1 star,
you dirty fucker.

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umsm
I believe you're missing the point. This is not another way to get spam, but
to save some money on something you're interested in but did not yet purchase
it.

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sopooneo
"For recovering abandoned carts, many ecommerce sites use email. Apps,
however, are just getting started. With half of emails now opened on a mobile
device, email is much less effective (unless you use deep links)."

Can someone explain what the author means here? It seems that if you are using
an app on your mobile device to shop, and emails sent to you are likely to be
opened on that same device, then email would be a _good_ way to notify you.

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bcoates
The "unless you use deep links" parenthetical kills the entire article. Not
providing a call to action that _allows your customer to make the purchase_ is
just bothering the user to no effect!

Are people seriously sending out emails that say "This dress you might like is
available in your size. Please open our app, find our search feature, remember
the name of the dress we were telling you about, input your size that we
apparently already know, add it to your cart, and checkout"?

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kunle
> The "unless you use deep links" parenthetical kills the entire article. Not
> providing a call to action that allows your customer to make the purchase is
> just bothering the user to no effect!

Not exactly - deeplinks done well take you right to the check out page, where
all you have to do is confirm the purchase. Most push notifications for the
moment open you into a random page into the app, which, I agree, doesn't
really add value.

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gemlog
How about coding sites such that folks don't need to 'add to cart' in order to
find out what they'd actually be paying if they were to purchase? That's most
often why I 'abandon' carts. They make me start a cart in order to see the
bottom line.

