Great expectations

“First, get your checkout as clean and as high converting as you possibly can” by removing any and all distractions, says Kavanagh. He adds that several analytics packages make it possible to see where online transactions are breaking down so you can take steps to shore up the process.

“Today's best practices are actually pretty simple,” he says. Through the free Google Analytics or any of the other more expensive analytics packages, “you can look at what people call a shopping cart funnel. You can keep track of what people do from the time they hit ‘proceed to checkout’ until they actually complete an order.”

Beyond analytics packages, there is another source of information on why online transactions break down that not nearly enough merchants take advantage of: the customers themselves.

“If you're looking at your analytics and you're baffled about why you're losing people, you've got the name, address, city, state, zip, and phone number on a bunch of folks who abandoned,” says Kavanagh. “Call 'em up and ask them what's going on.”

He warns, however, that before calling someone who abandoned a shopping cart, the merchant should check order-history records and make sure the customer didn't simply make the purchase through another channel.

“I've seen many times on business-to-business sites where customers have hit that final page of checkout, and then they actually print it out, transfer it to a P.O. and fax it in,” says Kavanagh.

Once a multichannel merchant has got an analytics package in place and is sure the checkout process is as clean as possible, try adding maybe a cross-sell and see what happens. “You will probably lose some people because of it,” Kavanagh says. “The questions is: Do you gain enough in the increased average order size to make up for what you're losing?”

	Embrace abandoned-cart e-mails

Another fairly straightforward area where online merchants can take steps to close more sales but aren't, is abandoned-shopping cart e-mails. And no, they won't freak people out if they're done right, says Kavanagh. He recommends a three-part series. The first should be an e-mail that goes out within a day that looks to be from a Web administrator.

The e-mail should note that the customer abandoned the cart and ask if there was some sort of technical problem, offer a technical-assistance phone number if there was, and a link to the cart to complete the purchases if there wasn't.

“The No. 1 reason people abandon carts before they checkout is they get distracted by something,” says Kavanagh. “E-commerce shopping mostly occurs between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. You know how it is; you're shopping and then suddenly an I.M. [instant message] appears or your boss comes up behind you, and you get distracted before you make the purchase. This is why abandoned-shopping-cart e-mails are so fundamental.”

The second abandoned-shopping-cart e-mail could be a simple reminder saying: “Did you forget something?” with the contents of the abandoned cart displayed. The third abandoned-shopping-cart e-mail Kavanagh recommends is a play on the old “this might be the last catalog you get from us” cover.

“The abandoned-cart e-mail twist on this strategy, however, should say something like: ‘From time to time we delete shopping carts; if this is something you want, please come back and buy it within the next couple of days or call this number and finish,’” says Kavanagh. “Of course, you don't really delete carts,” he adds.

One reason more companies don't send abandoned-cart e-mails is the difficulty in figuring out who should send them. For example, if the merchant determines the e-mail service provider should send them, then there is the challenge of delivering cart data to the vendor.

Kavanagh says that whoever sends order confirmation e-mails — likely the e-commerce platform provider — should also send the abandoned-cart messages. “Whatever utility you're using to send confirmation e-mails, just filter into that your abandoned-cart data and let that create your series,” he says.

According to Allurent's Grant, another reason people abandon carts is sticker shock, which can be avoided simply by letting them know the price before they get there.

“It's not as common as it used to be, but it is just terrible that people can't really see the full price until they get to the cart,” he says. “Often, the only reason they went to the cart in the first place was to find out the price. Now, some people will say you would have lost that customer anyway, but I don't agree. I think there's value in setting expectations. It always helps you convert more.”

He adds that customers should be able to see the contents of the cart right up until they hit “submit order,” and be given the opportunity to change those contents.

“If you aren't able to edit your cart at the point of submission, which is the first time you've found out how much it's going to cost, that's a problem,” he says.

Usability testing is also imperative, says Grant. How often? “Every time you make a change,” he says. “It's not that hard to go down to a Starbucks, offer a $5 gift card and get 20 people. It doesn't have to be major. And it doesn't have to be demographically or statistically significant to get a sense of whether it's going to work.”

He adds that it is also imperative to use some sort of analytics package to see where the checkout process breaks down.

“Marketers spend so much to get people to their sites,” Grant says. “Once you have them, you just can't screw that up.”