I agree with you, of course this is the user’s fault. Usability problems often occur because a user doesn’t see something, can figure out how a feature works, doesn’t read instructions, makes assumptions based on experiences with other sites and so on.

This is a scenario to illustrate how making a simple change to your site programming can accommodate customers and maximize/recover sales. Cart abandonment is one of the biggest pains for ecommerce managers. What if this could help recover just 2% of abandoned carts, would it be worth it?

Often people are shopping from work on their lunch break and cannot keep all their tabs open, or whatever the reason. Like I mentioned, in my case I expected the items to stay in the cart because other sites had done that for me.

VS may have lost a sale, but the reason for their loss was actually not the website, but realistically… user error.

Thanks for pointing out your blog. Subscribed!

That’s an interesting example from ProFlowers…personally I would find the “would a free vase help?” offer desperate and spammy if I was just poking around a site and had no intention to buy. I see big “Pros” and big cons for ProFlowers’ approach…risky.

http://thisweekinetail.blogspot.com/2008/02/site-abandonment-triggered-emails.html

If I find an example, I’ll post.

@Jason

Agreed.

@Dmitry

Excellent point. Actually that’s #7 on Marketing Experiments’ 10 Cart Recovery Techniques. Their studies have found 2-3 emails to be optimal but yes, spam is a concern.

Personally, I’ll risk looking like a spammer if I can save some sales. You can’t please everybody. But I’d pay close attention to (and test) subject lines for this type of email.

Users may add products to the cart without intending to check them out for any number of reasons (comparison shopping with other sites, in lieu of using a product comparator, etc)

In these scenarios, an e-commerce retailer can easily antagonize a customer by spamming them with multiple unwanted reminders to return to the cart. And that should be at least as much of a concern as preventing cart abandonment.

People enter their email address prior to the final checkout submit page typically. That is a natural, unobtrusive method.

When the first item is added to the cart, require an email address (in a popup?) and explain that you are asking “In case there’s a problem.” The customer can refuse to provide an email address, but just a one-field form that is quick and tells the customer WHY you’re asking is not too obtrusive, and you can ask for more information in the actual checkout process.

Thoughts?