Hi,

Well I know abandoned basket % = abandoned baskets divided by total baskets

The questions is when is a basket an abandoned basket.

1) Our Web manager calculates abandoned baskets based on baskets started in a week and not completed in that week. Therefore abandoned basket age will be 1 - 6 days old.

2) My Data guys think we should do it on a monthly basis so using the same logic as above, abandoned basket age will be anything between 1 and 30 days old.

3) I've suggested a basket isn't abandoned till its a certain age (same for every basket) and that the basket age is specific to each company, determined by analysing the time between first "add item to basket" and checkout. Then at what ever interval (lets say weekly) you count up the baskets that reach the basket age in the week and see how many didn't complete.

We have monthly promotions are in place to encourage orders in that month so perhaps we should stick to option 2)

any thoughts are welcome

thanks in advance

Colin

I'd would definitely say option 3 as well.

However, if you're running an abandoned baskets program, email the basket owner that night, just to check everythings OK, not to go down the "buy me now!" route. They may have a support issue, a question or some thing else that is preventing them from ordering.

In an ideal world you'd have a single customer view so you can see if the order has been placed in another channel, of course.

Option 3 is the most appropriate.

I work with LeadCall whose customers include a number of airlines, travel, insurance and retail companies - so they see lots of differing buyer behaviour. However the common thread is once a customer has dropped the basket, you need to contact him quickly. The 'magic 15 minutes' is often quoted as the optimum time to contact customers, however in practice that's not always feasible given limited resources. The point is to speak to customers as quickly as possible otherwise they've forgotten all about you and ordered elsewhere.

So what LeadCall does is connect the dropped online baskets direct to your call centre agents (presenting the order details and customer details), connect a call through to the customer, and with a simple helpful phone call they can identify the problem they had, answer any questions, maybe offer an incentive to complete the order - and watch the conversion rate go through the roof. The phone is proven to be the most efficient conversion channel, with customers reporting immediate 30% uplift in conversion rate.

For complicated, high value orders especially, customers welcome a friendly call. eg with a summer holiday booking, where there are unanswered questions (child rates, specific plane seats, transfers etc) customers may drop the booking, intending to come back later but never do. A timely call at this point works very effectively, unlike an email which can be ignored until its too late. Also with an insurance quote, the top 3 brands are often within a few pence of each other - a helpful call while the customer is still deciding will tip the balance virtually every time.

See http://www.leadcall.co.uk/ for details