I have compiled my "lost conversions" in to a pretty pie chart:




As you can see, I'm losing most of my customers at the "Login" stage. I recently added some text to the defaults on the Login page in an effort to make things seem more "honest", but I'm still losing people every day at that page. Suggestions or options, anyone?

Thanks,
-SC

Hi SC,

I can not give you any firm answers. But just tell you that you will always have some "misses". We don't request customers to login or sign up. They can place order as a guest.

But statestic is a funny thing.

A few month ago we added a "total cart" to the front page. Doing this I found a drop in the "check out conversation report" from 65-70% to 54% that is a huge drop but over the same time frame the number of visitors has only increased a little.
My conclusion is that people see the total cart and add produts for some reason or another. It can not be to see our shipping terms (min amount for free shipping) as that is listed right next to the cart. And many of the abanded shipping carts only got a single item in it.

Some abanded cart people have even signed up with name, address, etc. and I always send them a follow up e-mail and ask why ? - The answers supprices me. One guy just found the total order to be too expensive as he only needed "one pack" -well hey dud we are talking about $16.- One was looking for her creditcards, one did not have any money at the moment, etc. etc. -Remember this is after entering name address etc. it takes some efforts (people must have too much time on their hands).

Just trying to say there is a lot of abanded carts and we as shop keepers can only do so much !

I was considering if we should sign up for one of these "verification sites" but I am truly not conv. that they will help us. We have some first time buyers and they do not know "safe lock" "pad lock" one from the other I still think our money is better used on direct advertisment or similar to get more trafic to the site. Do you have any expirence ???

We have come to the conclussion that there is always going to be more abandons than successful orders. We tinkered with it, changed this, changed that, etc . . . all it does is move the place of abandonment, doesn't create any more orders. But over time, as we have stopped tinkering with it, our abandonment rate has improved.

We have worked on other things on the site, and left the checkout process alone.

Like Keepfiler mentions, I kinda think that working on getting more traffic, seems to be our priority. Even at that, improving the overall conversion rate, this is the one that really counts, seems to be more important to us as well even though we know that we are not going to get 10 percent of visitors to convert.

Wish someone had the magic answer to conversions, abandons, heck even traffic, but after so long, it just seems like an imposibilty, when there is so much other stuff to work on.

I have heard, many a merchant state, "build the site for your visitor" to me that seems like the route to go, somehow, the better you do that, the rest will just follow.

I was seeing the same kind of problem from the login page, so I axed it and conversions did go up about 10% on average. I made a link to the login page for the few customers who do like to register an account, but it appears on the top of the first page of 2-page checkout for me. I also have an "Account Login" which appears in my header at all times, but I'm not sure people use it that much. I just make it available in case.

I've had a huge dropoff in conversions this last couple of months, and I couldn't tell you why. My only guess is that people were looking to see what's out there for holiday gift ideas, and comparison shopping is at peak. I'll be interested to see if the conversions go back up after the holiday season is over.

Thanks for all of the replies. Has anyone else had success removing the login page?
-SC

As usual Rick, you are right on!!!

When you do a have a slow time be sure to recheck all your special html pages like contactus, faqs, shipping, returns, etc.. Make sure they are current (yes your policies will change from time to time) and make sure they are worded in the positive. Try a read "the rules" as if you are a customer rather than the owner. Make sure it covers every little thing you can think of. If the information is important in making the sale, most customers won't bother emailing or calling. They will just go to the next site.

The log in page has a lot to do with your customer base. Weekdays nearly 90% of our customers log in. It's closer to 60% on the weekend. If I had more of a gift site I would probably not bother with one.

OK I started to pay a little attention to the IP address on the orders and the once sitting in the "lost carts" list. And it seem like very often the customer is going in twice. First to check the price/see the product then they shop around for a better price or something and then they come back and actual place the order and for one reason or another their computer don't hook up with the previus cart cookie.
It is not like this with all the "lost carts" but quite a few from what I can see.

Anyone else seen this patern ??

Keepfiler

Yes. Every time we re-implement it the conversion rate drops. When we give the option, the rate increases. We use the 2-step with log-in option. Holds pretty steady at 35% conversion. Anything else and it drops into the 20's (avg). So, we have decided to leave it as is and concentrate on other things within the site.