

Olark (YC S09) launches Shopping Cart Saver - steiza
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/27/olark/

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aresant
Shopping cart optimization is one of the most often ignored area for small-to-
mid sized ecommerce businesses.

This is a brilliant, simple solution - there are several "AI" cart abandon
programs such as Upsellit.com, and other live-chat solutions, but Olark's
inclusion of user data, cart value, and simple IM integration will make a big
difference.

I'm 100% going to test this, and will report back about conversion results vs.
other live chat or AI tools.

~~~
datasink
I worked on a team that developed one of the automated chat bot retention
systems. Thanks for quoting "AI", as ours was really crude, but at the same
level of other offerings. If memory serves, we cycled through basic pattern
matches on normalized words to spit out canned replies and coupon codes to
catch people leaving a landing page.

This is another one of those things that you'd figure people would hate and be
annoyed by, but actually ends up being really effective. A company like
ThinkGeek probably couldn't leverage it, but someone running a CPA weight loss
offer definitely could. In a large way.

~~~
bcx
You could plug your bot into Olark, it speaks XMPP, I'd be pretty interested
to see how well it does.

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apsurd
Most shopping carts are abandoned because the buyer just wanted to see how
much a purchase _actually_ costs. Factoring in shipping, taxes, and possibly
shadily hidden fees.

    
    
      "All set to go with your purchase Mr. Smith?"
      "Nah, I was just testing ... =) [close tab]"

~~~
datasink
The fact they went through that exercise demonstrates that there is some
interest, however. With retention systems, you have the opportunity to save a
sale with a time-limited coupon code, for those that may be bouncing because
of the price or because they wish to return later (which likely won't happen).
For certain types of products, this is really effective.

