But what about the unconventional things that you can experiment with in checkout? Today we’ll “check out” 3:

Facebook authentication

Social sign on through Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ is common for media sites like Rdio, Spotify and Huffington Post, as it simplifies site registration down to just a few button clicks. But it’s less commonly found on ecommerce sites.

An alternative to registering through a long form, Wine.com offers the option to register and subsequently sign in with Facebook. Not all customers will want to register this way, but it could reduce abandonment amongst those who see the value in simple registration. It also spares customers from creating and remembering another password, or which email address was used for account creation.

An ecommerce site that uses social sign on should consider FUD – the fears, uncertainties and doubts customers may experience. Wine.com provides a detailed explanation of why one would benefit from Facebook Connect, how data is shared and how privacy concerns are handled.

Social login is tricky to test, it’s better to make the strategic decision and stick with it. If you decide to drop it down the road, you can migrate Facebookers to your regular account system, but not without notifying customers and creating/issuing a password for them, which may cause more customer confusion and frustration than the tactic was intended to avoid.

Chat button

Apple inserts a secondary call-to-action to remind customers they can launch a chat window at any point of the one-page checkout that help is required. The subtle button appears at each step opposite the Continue button. It’s a user-friendly tactic, the customer doesn’t need to scroll up or down to look for the chat feature, and doesn’t have to lose her place in the form.

Inject some personality

I’ve recommended the Amazon-style ask-for-email-as-first-step approach several times on Get Elastic, so it’s not such an unconventional thing to test. But Bonobos really takes it to another level, almost entertaining the customer with creative copy that handles FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around privacy and security, and makes the first step look very quick and easy to complete.

The password entry step is equally as simple and whimsical.

Bonobos’ payment entry step is also creative and fun. What if this approach outperformed the traditional, stale web form?

Before looking at the unusual, make sure you’ve covered the basics first. We have a number of checkout optimization articles to check out.

Create an account

Offering guest checkout with option to create an account after successful conversion is a win-win, but don’t forget to romance why the customer should bother creating one. Action Envelope makes this a simple 3-field process, but the call-to-action does compete with several other page elements.

Image credit: PitStop Media

Keep shopping

Are you thinking “why would someone who just finished shopping want to start again?”

Sometimes cross-selling and upselling is ignored or worse — causes abandonment — during the buying process, so post-purchase merchandising gives you a second chance to get the buyer’s attention. And, you now have concrete evidence of purchase intent (and ownership). Product recommendations may be even more relevant to this type of visitor.

Suggest, suggest, suggest

This Amazon example is overwhelming, and I don’t necessarily recommend the “shotgun” approach, but it gives you a good cross-section of the ways you can merchandize (recommended based on browse history, new items, etc). Though I’m surprised this example doesn’t include social proof “customers who bought X also bought YZA,” though it may be that there were multiple items in the order.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand via @SandraNiehaus <-- follow her!

Let’s make a deal

NFL Shop incentivizes re-purchase with a coupon code (via email).

Image credit: Listrak

Smart cross-sell

This confirmation email from Shutterfly is smart on several levels. It’s persuasive, using “gift to say thank you” rather than a simple coupon code. “We’d like to treat you” makes the buyer feel special. It’s time-limited to create urgency, and suggests taking up the offer will enhance the use of the purchased product (photos), to take the next step and create a photo book.

Image credit: PracticalEcommerce

Get ‘em curious

Bliss features products — not with thumbnails — but with creative that really pre-sells the product and generates interest. “Winner after 40,000 votes” and “20-in-1 wonder balm” play on the converted buyer’s curiosity.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Email opt-in

The above Bliss example also includes a subtle email opt-in. Don’t be afraid to combine calls-to-action, just make sure they’re priority weighted in your design.

Content, tools and apps

NFL Shop highlights its gift finder tool, but you could certainly link to native apps (including app-catalogs), blogs, content features, event calendars, and the like.

Image credit: Listrak

Survey

Survey requests can be incentived or unincentivized.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Notice the email opt-in above?

Image credit: Econsultancy via @gcharlton <-- follow him!

Gettin’ social

Share purchase

Though I doubt this is a highly-used feature, be my guest to use it.

Image credit: South Florida Web Marketing Blog

This will be more successful for certain industries than others (books, music, some apparel, etc)

Pin it!

Customers may be shy to share purchases on Facebook, but may be more likely to Pin them to Pinterest. Sephora enables individual items to be shared.

Aliexpress marketplace offers multiple sharing buttons after a buyer has left seller feedback.

Image credits: GetElastic

Recruit

Rather than socially share individual purchases, why not ask your customer to recruit for you? This makes sense for membership sites (like socially-conscious Kiva) and vente-privee like HauteLook or Gilt.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Sharing can be incentivized with referral points.

Image credit: AllThingsD

At the very least, re-stating your business’ value proposition on Thank You pages and in confirmation emails can take the edge of any buyer’s remorse and encourage the customer to buy with you again next time.

Bottom line: do something. A generic Thank You page is a wasted opportunity.

(Email subscribers, can’t see video? View this post on the Web)

How it works is simple. Amex holders sync their card and Twitter accounts, and follow @AmexSync to watch for deals of the day and corresponding hashtags. @AmexSync will respond with a confirmation hashtag, which the user must retweet within 15 minutes. Product is delivered to the billing address connected to the Amex card.

Amex also has a (previously launched) Offers program, where discounts can be claimed through the same process, and savings can be to purchase at the Offer retailer’s website (so long as the synced Amex is used for payment).

Aside from making impulse buying frictionless, the brilliance is the baked-in social component — all sales through the channel are broadcast through the cardholder’s network. Twitter accounts must be public in order for @AmexSync to read and respond, so every offer claimed and purchase made is a public affair.

Participating brands benefit from the social boost. Upcoming products include Kindle Fire, Donna Karan jewelry, Sony Action Cam and Xbox 360.

What’s most intriguing is it’s not an online retailer that pioneered the convert-by-hashtag. Amazon and eBay could easily have done this syncing saved billing information, perhaps they will “follow.” Any telecom could leverage carrier billing, or any loyalty program to generate excitement and bump up point-churn.

Of course, with all shiny objects, only time will tell if customers care about buying with hashtags. The more exciting aspect is the ability to buy through an independent channel without enduring the traditional checkout process, or even visiting a website.

Cart totals in checkout – best practice?

Back in 2007, Elastic Path conducted an audit of the Internet Retailer Top 100 for our Ecommerce Checkout Report. At that time, only 14% of checkouts displayed cart review boxes in checkout. Conversion rates were 60% higher for the sites that didn’t show cart totals.

What’s changed in the last 5 years? I checked out the current IR50 this week and found a 50/50 split between showing cart contents and not. It’s certainly trendy (perhaps it’s been touted as best practice at conferences like Internet Retailer), with Apple, Walmart and Sears adopting it.

Which test won?

Marketing Experiments’ test site was not disclosed, but web clinic attendees were live-polled which version, showing cart totals or not, resulted in higher conversion. Overwhelmingly, the audience selected the underperforming version.

Gut feel lost. As it so often does.

The winner was the version that didn’t show cart contents in checkout. The relative conversion rate difference between winner and loser was 28.6%, and a full 8 points higher in absolute conversion rate.

This is an isolated test, your mileage may vary. But we learn 3 important lessons from this case.

1. Gut feel fails. Often.

2. “Best practice” fails. Often.

3. Following the leader can fail. If this ecommerce site blindly emulated Apple or Walmart, it would have left big money on the table.

That also goes for blindly following a case study mentioned in a blog post. Test it for yourself. This test is a particularly good one to start with in checkout, as it’s generally believed to help users, but appears to cause distraction or second thoughts in the funnel, despite its popularity in ecommerce design.

Some sites, like Amazon, make the email input the entire first step of checkout.

Capturing email as early as possible is a generally accepted best practice (and one of the few sacred cows in conversion optimization). But there are situations when you just don’t have an email address to work with (think of shopping cart review page abandonment or when email field is not the first step).

To follow up from last post Saving Abandoned Carts: The Experts Weigh In, Charles Nicholls from SeeWhy has shared a couple tips on how to recover abandoned shopping carts when you’re going email address commando.

Please note, from this point on it’s Charles speaking, I’ll take a backseat from here. – LB

Detecting abandonment

There are two basic techniques: (1) detect when the browser is closed (i.e. clicking the red ‘X’) and (2) based on a session timeout. Obviously there are abandons where the session has ended (as set by the webserver) but the visitor has not yet closed the browser. So you need to use either a timeout on its own, or a timeout and a browser-close together. Where the browser is closed, then this can be used to send an email (to the subset) without the 20 minute delay.

Recovery abandoned carts without an email address

In the event that a visitor abandons without an email address being captured, then you have two options:

(1) Retarget via advertising
(2) Serve an exit lightbox

Let’s look at both from the point of view of campaign timing.

(1) Retargeted advertising

Conversion rates for retargeted ads drop off just as steeply as with email. So the advice is to serve ads as soon as you can find the visitor on another site, and be prepared to pay extra if it means reaching them more quickly after an abandon. Leads go cold, no surprise there. With retargeted advertising, you can target visitors while they still have their browser open on your site, but are comparison shopping using multiple browser tabs.

(2) Exit Lightbox

An exit light box is a very effective technique which prompts the user as they go to exit a site to enter an email address. In this case you have to use a browser-close action because a time out won’t work. In terms of timing, the email campaign should be triggered immediately because the user has requested their remarketing campaign and won’t expect to wait for 20 minutes before requesting their information.

Because blog comments typically don’t see much light of day once the article is more than a day old (and most of our loyal readers subscribing by RSS or email), I wanted to dedicate a post to the topics of optimal cart recovery email timing and cannibalization of natural conversions (that would have happened without the recovery email).

Viktor from Grass Roots Store asked:

Wonder if less than 20 minutes would increase conversion further? Or is that too soon? Is 20 minutes the low end of sending out this email?

I had recalled that SeeWhy‘s research into cart recovery found immediate remarketing achieved highest conversion rate, so I reached out by email to Charles Nicholls to provide his insight on timing:

There is no doubt that sending a first email immediately once the abandon is detected is the most effective technique. We have run many tests on this, and have always found that the immediate send always outperforms one sent later (there’s a Lucky Brand Jeans case study up on SeeWhy.com which is based on an A/B test where the real time one generates three times more revenue than one sent in batch at +24 hours).

The reason for this is that an immediate email ‘connects’ with the emotion of the originally intended purchase. This emotion dissipates rapidly. We often also see higher average order values with an immediate email for this reason (this was a factor at Lucky Brand, for example).

What about natural return rate cannibalization?

Serial abandonment is a common behavior. In fact, the more frequently a single customer abandons a cart, the more likely they are to buy. 2.8 times more likely, according to SeeWhy. Does abandoned cart remarketing eat into organic conversion rates?

James Daniel asked:

…by emailing after 20 minutes there has to be the issue of traffic cannibalisation? Would be good if somebody could clarify.

John Jones commented:

20 mins is far too soon – that would eat into my natural return rate.

Chris Sheen of SaleCycle, the company that developed the infographic chimed in:

We have done some work with our brands looking at even quicker response times, but generally advise against it. Primarily as there is a risk of cannibalising ‘natural recoveries’ where people will still complete their purchase without prompting, and we want to ensure a natural customer journey as much as possible.

As James points out, we do a lot of work with our clients to look at the impact an email might have on the customer experience – and this plays closely to the types of emails we advise our clients to send which are relevant (personalised, product details, etc) and focus on enforcing the strength of the brand (to which the customer has already bought into).

Charles Nicholls reminds us that “you can test that”:

In terms of cannibalizing organic sales (i.e. those that would come back and purchase under their own steam) the ONLY way to understand this reliably is by using a control group, where 50% of the traffic gets the remarketing campaign, and 50% gets nothing. Both groups need to be run at the same time because of the effects of promotions. We have measured the organic return rate at on average 8% – so if you do nothing, 8% of visitors where an email address has been collected will come back and buy.

Charles also offered a rationale for why after 20 minutes, recovery rate drops off:

Many web servers use 20 minutes as a standard setting for a session timeout after which the user needs to start over. We’ve analyzed patterns of customer behavior and concluded that for most brands, 21 minutes can reliably be used as a cut off point after which it is statistically very unlikely that the visitor will try and reinvigorate their session and make a purchase. This works for most sites but of course there are always exceptions.

Does “it depend?”

Daniel Kohn from AbandonAid shared:

I’ve also read about the 20 minute sweet spot, but as a consultant on multiple large ecommerce websites, the honest truth is that every site is different and finding that ultimate time depends on multiple factors. I find that if the products being sold are highly price sensitive like electronics, then 20 minutes is too early because they are shopping around and closer to 1 hour works better. If it’s a very high ticket item like jewellery, again 20 minutes is not ideal because a shopper needs more time to think if they are on the fence. Some sites I’ve worked on like ticketing for holidays or concerts etc, 20 minutes might be too long…

To Daniel’s comment, Charles Nicholls replied:

@Daniel has some experience which suggests different results in some markets – we’ve not found that but I’d love to hear more about those. It could well be that certain creative approaches work better with a longer delay in some circumstances (i.e. a more marketing / promotional email might work better with a longer delay).

My thoughts:

I can’t argue with the quicker-is-better theory. The data backs it up. Both SeeWhy and SaleCycle’s research has found diminishing returns as time passes.

I also understand why marketers would be hesitant to pull the trigger too soon. Brands don’t want to come across as pushy or spammy. We know serial abandoners spend more money, thus first-abandon triggered emails may cut average order value if they successfully incite an immediate conversion, especially if the email is incentivized. (A holdout test that factors in the AOV of “organic” recoveries will show you whether your remarketing is rushing your customer out of a bigger basket.)

If your site’s average days to purchase and visits to purchase is high, combined with a higher-than-average baseline “organic” recovery rate (>8%), you’ll likely expect less of an uptick from immediate remarketing than the average business. Those who are just not done shopping and will convert at a later date will simply ignore your triggers. But that doesn’t change the concept that sending a retargeting message sooner than later means a higher success rate.

Remarketing emails have to be opened, and targeting customers when the shopping experience is still fresh in their minds is better than hours or days later, when your customer’s inbox is cluttered with messages from other businesses.

Testing cart recovery emails

When conducting testing, I also recommend conducting a holdout test (50% of abandoners get a recovery email, 50% don’t). But keep in mind, with holdout tests, the success of your challenger depends on design, content and execution. The recovery differential of your first test may be 9%, but a follow up test with a completely different timing, design and offer may have a 26% spread. More than one round of testing, testing different variables against a holdout control, or A/B/C/D testing can provide you insight into what variables provide the most payoff.

Always measure revenue per visitor and profit alongside conversion lift.

And embrace segmentation. Here are some customer segment ideas:

Serial abandoners (revisit=1, revisit=2, revisit=3, etc)
Serial abandoners who come back and add more to cart
Serial abandoners who come back to edit cart contents
Visitors who are logged in customers
Visitors who are also signed up to email program
Visitors who have visited more than X times in the last 90 days
Visitors who have made a purchase in the last 180 days
Visitors who have purchased more than $X in the last 180 days
Cart abandoners vs checkout abandoners (the latter show stronger intent to purchase)
What step of checkout did the abandonment occur?
What device was used (desktop vs tablet vs smartphone)

What say you?

With that, I’ll turn it over to you, our readers. There are undoubtedly some exceptions to every rule when it comes to marketing optimization. Have you tested and found your industry responds better to a longer delay time? Or have you tested cart page abandonment vs. checkout abandonment and found different timing sweet spots? Shoot me an email at linda.bustos@elasticpath.com, your story could be the next feature on Get Elastic.

Off-the-blog, Charles shared with me some tips for remarketing to visitors that haven’t provided their email address by account or in the first step of checkout. Tune in next post to learn how…

Click to blow up this infographic

Takeaways and comments:

Timing matters. Conversion rate drops as time passes from abandonment – 50% within 24 hours. Within 60 minutes is recommended based on this data

Test subject lines. Including your company name has the highest impact on open rates, just edging out product details. Remember, cart recovery emails are not the same as your regular campaigns, don’t rely on what works for your core program.

Content (and design) is king. The averages presented in the infographic are interesting, but the sample layout is just that – a sample. Where you put each link and design element influences click through rate as well. Test your templates and call-to-action labels, and make sure each of these elements are indeed clickable.

Click infographic to enlarge

Tweetables:

• Only 9% of checkouts are 3-step vs 54% 4-step and 33% 5-step Tweet this

• The avg # of form fields in a checkout process is 25 (max 33) Tweet this

• 91% of retailers have 21-28 checkout form fields Tweet this

• 84% of ecommerce sites support express checkout Tweet this

• 66% of ecommerce sites offer guest checkout (34% DON’T!) Tweet this

• 32.35% of checkouts use black asterisks for required fields vs 31.62% red Tweet this

• RED is the most popular checkout button color (31%), GREEN 20%, BLUE 19% Tweet this

Understanding the dynamics behind a successful shopping experience is critical. You need to optimize the entire experience for your shoppers, from landing to checkout pages. Knowing how to do it right will determine whether you see a 5% revenue lift or 20%.

I’m excited to be joining Chris Goward from Wider Funnel for a webinar E-Commerce Conversion Optimization from Entry to Checkout. We’ll be covering the latest insights, research and strategies on how successful e-commerce sites maximize their conversion funnels.

You’ll learn:

• The causes behind shopping cart abandonment and how to mitigate it
• What on-page factors and variables improve conversions and revenue
• Critical areas to evaluate on your landing pages
  Case Studies: “How they were doing it wrong and what they did”

Webinar Details:
Date: September 27th, 2012
Time: 10:00am PT; 1:00pm ET

To join us, register today!

The stock answer to the question is to “test it,” but simple tests may lead you astray. If you test the presence of cross-sells against a cart without, and without wins, you may conclude that cross-sells don’t work. When it may be your choice of Presentation, how you Populate your merchandising zones, and how you Persuade that wasn’t working.

Today we’ll look at examples of these 3Ps to help you craft a cross-selling test (or re-test) that “works.”

Presentation

Some sites show cross-sells inside a “mini-cart” or interstitial page before reaching the cart (and some in addition to).

An interstitial page is a page between the product page and cart that displays offers or cross-sells.

Design

Though it’s near impossible to predict where the fold will be for each customer, designing your cart with hard bars or lines that separate cart contents from other content can “bounce” the user’s eye and prevent scrolling. Consider the fold!

Similarly, tabbed content may be overlooked by the user. Make sure you’re tracking mouseovers and click through if you use them.

A carousel is an alternative to tabs for showing more cross sells on a page without clutter or “paradox of choice.” Not all users will notice the scroll arrows, but some will.

Enabling products to be added to cart without clicking out of the cart can work for certain products.

Finally, ensure your call-to-action does not get lost in the overall design.

Placement

Testing the placement of cross-sells is the only way to tell you what works best for your product and within your design context.

They are typically presented horizontally along the bottom or vertically along right hand side, and sometimes both.

Showing suggestions inline demands attention and may be more effective than side or bottom placement, but attachment depends on the relevance of the recommendation to cart contents.

Art.com uses a twist of this, recommending a value-add as a call-to-action button presented inline in the cart.

Placing above cart contents may also get more attention than side or bottom (use your heat mapping tools to verify).

Cafepress animates its cross-sells with Javascript. As they appear it prompts a “what’s this?” response.

Perhaps the most creative presentation is BeachBody, which bakes the cross-sell into checkout steps. I was unable to capture a screen grab of it without submitting credit card info.

Population

What the cross-sells are are more important than how you present them!

Paradox of choice

Sometimes less is more, so make sure the number of suggestions presented one of the variables you are testing.

If you do throw a lot of things at the wall, it’s a good idea to keep them highly relevant to the product(s) in the cart.

Here Amazon is featuring more from this designer. Consider the context – the product in the cart is bathroom decor, for which it is highly likely that the buyer would be interested in matching items. Each product type is different, so you have to use your noggin to configure appropriate associations.

Sometimes drawing from the same product line actually causes confusion, when it is a substitute for the item in the cart. In this example, it would be better to display the warranty and items frequently bought with the item in the cart, rather than the same products, different SKUs.

With fashion items, cross-selling based on “crowdsourcing” (like people who viewed X also viewed Y) may create a similar situation.

Similarly, cross-selling near-product matches like same shoe, different specs (in this case, boot height) may also be sub-optimal. In this case however, it may be intended as an upsell – to remind the customer that a similar, higher priced item in the line is available.

If you don’t have much session browsing data to help you personalize recommendations, using default “top sellers” or “you might like” might work, but make sure you’re measuring impact of showing random product suggestions vs. none at all, and tracking click through and attachment rates.

Persuasion

Persuasive merchandising

Sometimes it’s not about the actual suggestions, but the suggestion that one should keep exploring the shop. Victoria’s Secret’s in the fashion business, with a large and diverse catalog. Showing more items may be a subconscious trigger to keep looking. (Paired with a “$X till free shipping” callout may be even more persuasive).

Value propositions

If you’ve read this blog for some time, you’ll know about the importance of value propositions in persuasive selling.

Musician’s Friend uses one in its warranty callout:

Persuasive labels

Using “you” in your label, like “Recommended for You” and “You might like” is more persuasive than “Similar items” or “We suggest.”

Drs. Foster and Smith do even better, hitting the emotional strings with “Your pet might also like.”

Creating a little urgency never hurt no one, either. Harry and David’s “Today’s specials”

Harry and David today’s specials triggers that “maybe I don’t want to miss this” feeling, and may win higher attachment rates than generic labels.

Persuasive pricing

Blue Nile offers a no-brainer cross-sell (jewelry polish), but also a discount-with-purchase item that may be enticing.

Tests should be conducted on which items are most attractive, and how the offer is presented (red price, subtle, large vs. small thumbnail, interstitial, etc.

Even if your cross-sells are proven to work in the cart, challenge how you do them today with new designs to see if you can squeeze more revenue out of a different approach.