Mark Dorrington
|
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
When I was a kid, I often rode at the front of the shopping trolley when Mum
was doing the household weekly grocery buy. Having loaded all the groceries
into the car (brown paper bags, in those days), Mum would wheel the trolley
over to the designated trolley bay. I remember noticing even then that not all
shoppers did this: some Mothers would look around and, upon noticing that
no-one was 'really' looking, leave the trolleys astrew in the carpark for the
supermarket junior to come and collect.
Not long after I became a shopping trolley chaser myself. Things have changed,
however. The larger chains are making us 'rent' trolleys; either a one-dollar
or two-dollar coin can give us access to shopping trolleys (which we can redeem
upon return).
But not everyone is
physically shopping anymore, with a lot of us
shopping on-line. And look out vendors, cos' there's a lot of shopping trolleys
- or 'Carts' - that aren't being returned. So much so that shoppers are
abandoning their trolleys / carts - with all items intact - before they proceed
to checkout. A survey conducted in 2006 by
Marketing
Sherpa indicated that 59.8% of on-line shoppers are browsing, adding items
to their cart, but then leaving the arcade without paying.
Our CEO is passing around a book at work at the moment called
Web Design for ROI (Lance
Loveday & Sandra Niehaus). Amongst all of the wonderfully presented 'Return
On Investment' tips they provide for online businesses, Loveday & Niehaus'
slant on 'abandoned shopping carts' is truly thought provoking. Posing a
similar scenario in an actual supermarket, the store manager would consider
abandoned shopping trolleys around the checkout area as an emergency of epic
proportions! 'Web Design for ROI' paints this extremely serious picture of how
online businesses are simply not paying anywhere near enough attention to their
(lack of) online sales.
There's always a flip-side to every argument. Sure, we've all walked through a
physical bricks & mortar supermarket and noticed something not-quite-right.
A plain-paper wrapped parcel of cabana precariously nestled in amongst the
chocolate biscuit section; a brand-new children's toy sitting on top of a stack
of bananas; it's not hard to work out that shoppers are finicky and clearly
change their minds from time-to-time. But on a SCALE OF 59.8% ABANDONMENT
(sorry for shouting) the major chains would employ an armed security guard at
every aisle-corner to monitor every mother & child's movement after
inserting items into their trolley.
(Note: Maybe next they'll design shelves and trolleys like mini-bar fridges in
hotels: when an item is removed, you can't put it back... and when you've put
something into your trolley it can only be released by the check-out
supervisor).
Shopping on the Internet is different. I can literally purchase anything in my
underwear because no-one is looking. So why aren't online businesses adjusting
their sales 'closure' strategies to suit the medium? Is it because they simply
don't know that shoppers are engaging in commercial mutiny? Are they checking
their monthly / weekly / daily statistics? Was their shopping cart tested?
Heaven forbid their shopping cart is broken! Is the cart usability 'usable'? Is
their service provider asking them the questions that need to be asked? The
list goes on...
According to Marketing Sherpa, they believe there are
four important
steps in addressing the issue. 1: Promote return / exchange policies. 2:
Post reassuring security icon(s). 3: Include privacy and trust language next to
fields asking for personal data. 4: Remind shoppers of their abandoned cart.
As the song lyric suggests, it certainly is a small world - after all. And as
far as real-time, online credit card payment
e-commerce solutions are concerned, it's only going to keep on getting smaller.
Dear vendor, before taking the big leap into the e-commerce pool, have you
checked that all the boxes are ticked? And - most importantly - can you afford
to have 59.8% of your shoppers 'virtually' dumping their shopping carts at your
checkout?
(Note: I'm glad Mum never abandoned our shopping trolley... I'd still be
sitting at the front of it).
