Abandoned Cart Reminder

DT,

What a fantastic idea.

But I know the nervous Nellies will say the opposite.

You can not fight your way out of a bag full of chocolate by only eating the chocolate.


Dave

A lot of companies are using "Abandoned Cart" techniques. Why? Because it works.

I'm happy to see it.

I have several items in my cart at work. These are books and things that I put there when talking to customers. They are not even items I plan on buying. But... the system sent me a reminder about the items in my cart and included a note that if I finished my purchase and it was over 35$ I would qualify for free standard shipping...
I actually started looking at what I had in there. If FAA did that with a free shipping coupon on orders of $125 or more there would be a ton more sales... you can't just remind them there has to be a carrot at the end of that stick....

Not sure how long it's been here but I was getting those emails when I was testing the shopping cart on my secure domain when I started uploading images about a month ago.

It's a good feature. As Jeff noted, would be better with a discount offer on the first or even second reminder.

Cheers

I like it. It certainly can not hurt.

But I have to be honest with you, I hate getting those reminders and can't remember ever following up with a purchase. But the last thing a person should do is assume your own attitude represents any significant part of the market.

I don't like the discount idea. I do not want to train people on how to get a discount and only buy when they do.

This has been around for quite awhile. The annoying thing is when you put something in your cart to check the shipping price and then take it out of the cart. Then you get emails telling you you left something in your cart that isn't there anymore.

I've gotten them from FAA before when testing out the cart thing.

I've also gotten them from other sites, I put stuff in my cart to compare pricing with other sites.

A reminder NEVER helps me push the buy button. That decision to buy goes to the site with the lowest price/fasted delivery usually.

I TOTALLY agree with Floyd, don't add a discount, don't reward people for holding back waiting for a coupon. That is the next wave (after free shipping). Probably bound to happen, but that just teaches us to put stuff in our cart and wait for a coupon discount in our email like a Pavlovian Dog.

Floyd,

That's a good point but I spent a lot of years running retail sales floors and the personal discount tactic was a killer for me. The discount was small and the margin was still good but it made the customer feel special and they were mine forever.

A little different situation here, but I always look for promo codes when I buy online and I do buy quite a bit online. A few bucks off a decent priced piece doesn't sound unreasonable.

I get offers daily from good sites and companies...usually software, photo sites etc. offering 10-50% off and I gotta admit I occasionally do buy in on the discount.

Cheers

The abandoned cart recovery efforts to seem to work to some degree...

https://www.barilliance.com/cart-abandonment-rate-statistics/

I try not to get annoyed . . . especially when I get the email after I've actually purchased. But I must admit I get annoyed. And contrary to most, apparently, am less likely to buy when I get e-mail reminders.

Not exactly my first rodeo when it comes to retailing. Been at it for over 45 years...

I have never been a big fan of regular discounting as part of a standard marketing plan.

IMHO, it shows a weakness in the marketing plan and a less than adequate understanding of the Marketing Mix and a less than effective adverting program.

Everyone sees it differently, but I don't want discounting to be an ongoing or standard part of my marketing plan and I hope if Sean goes to that, which I don't see happening, that he makes it optional.

Everyone has to do whatever they feel they have to do and what they are most comfortable with.

I am at a stage where I consumer very little and save money. I am shocked by how easily I save money these days.

If I got this sort of email, I'd just move on. As an immigrant's son, I write it off as part of American commercial society.

But there must be a percentage of people who say 'oh yeah, I got distracted" or whatever. They follow the link and buy the product.

Now a question, is the reminder linking back to your AW or the FAA site?

I will check that out.

Dave

Nikki, I'm the same and actually had a go about it to the guy who set it up.... However, it's been proven to work so we are in the minority :-)

I don't mind if FAA/Pixels discounts their part - but I don't want my price discounted - thank you very much. As for the reminder that I have something in the cart or that I've looked at something - that is what the delete tab is for. LOL

I just checked my cart and found a couple of items that I KNOW I never added to it. How does that happen?

Maybe the next gen abandoned cart software will also track IP addresses or cookies of people who NEVER respond to the abandoned cart emails - and stop sending the emails to people who just get annoyed.

Cathy

The cart is based on IP address. If someone else uses the same address you can see what they put in your cart. It is very common in a work environment but sometimes happens elsewhere. I always add one of my own to the cart when I see it.

Thank you JC. Mine is not a work environment, and I, and only I, use this IP and computer. Very rural area, no neighbors. Must have been one of my dogs or cats walking across my keyboard, lol.

Cathy, please give all of your animals this link. Thank you very much.

FASGallery.com

Hahaha, good one Floyd, I'll get right on that.

It seems like it goes out up to three times and it is triggered by something going in the cart regardless of whether it is still in there. Every time I get it I go empty the cart to stop them.

Word would get out that the way to get a discount on FAA is to add something to the cart and not buy it for a couple days. Randomly it might be a good thing but if that offer came out every time someone added stuff to a cart and let it sit then the discount might become the norm.

Just had another odd item added to my personal shopping cart. Should I change my password? Maybe I have a ghost, haha!

i think it was talked about a while ago, if its there now, i guess he snuck it in. he seems to read the forum in the form of a phantom or something.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Excellent. Glad to hear it has been implemented.

Part of the way it has been adopted annoys me. Go to your artist website (not logged in) and add something to your cart.

You'll get a popup message that says this:

"Product added to cart.

Please enter your e-mail to begin checkout."

It's followed by a place to enter your email and a button to go to cart or a link that says "continue shopping"

There's no obvious way to even see what the total will be without entering your email address. Now as a frequent user of the site, I know I can bypass this by clicking continue shopping and then click the cart icon. A non-regular user of the site may not realize they can even see the total without surrendering their email address.

I don't know if I'm the norm or not, but that's the point I exit as a shopper. I obviously expect to give up my contact information when I am ready to buy but I want to be able to see my total bill without having to do that.

I especially worry that this was added to our artist websites because as artists we are not major shopping sites. We are comparatively unknown entities and people undoubtedly shop from our sites with more reservation than from Amazon, etc. FAA is not a household name but has a far larger internet presence than most of us for that matter. FAA as a whole with a ton more traffic may reclaim more sales than they lose. I wish I was as confident about that.

thinking about it this may have been here for a while, but you have to enter your email address ahead of time, and not everyone does that.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I prefer internet shopping to brick & mortar stores in general.

I want to see the total price, shipping, tax, products BEFORE I provide any personal information, except zip code for shipping estimate.
If I can't see this information, I am off to a competitor site.

When there is the potential to check out with PayPal, that site gets my business over sites that I have to provide all my personal info and enter credit card info.

If I am online browsing and there are annoying pop-ups and I can't check out quickly, easily, I "X" out.

Hopefully Sean will make FAA, AW and Pixels easy peasy for guest check out shoppers.

@ Mark, I did exactly what you said, yes, most shoppers wouldn't know that work-around. Lost sales.

I do the same thing as Carlin. I am not giving my email just to see the total...

To get around this, I give Mike Savad's email instead. :-)

Hahahaha

Love it! :)