Customer abandoned shopping cart. Now what?

A recent study by Experian found that online shopping carts are abandoned at an alarmingly high rate of 56.2 percent! This means that the site visitor placed item in the shopping cart but left the site and did not complete the purchase. 56.2 percent is a lot of potential business to lose!

Two things that your online business should do is check when the customers abandoned their cart and follow up with a marketing email.

We design E-commerce websites that allow business owners to check and see when customers have abandoned their shopping cart. Some guesswork is involved and the information is not black and white but here are a couple of scenarios. If the customer places one item in the cart and abandons after a few minutes they may be searching other websites to compare. You know your product best so you have to make the call. Maybe you're not competitive with your pricing? Look at your competitors and see what is being offered. The price may not be the only thing the customer is comparing. Are they looking at the warranty information or service provided along with the product?

The other thing you want to see is if the customer leaves the cart after adding additional product. Are they adding accessories or items that work in conjunction with another item in the cart? If they are abandoning the cart in that case it could be that the add-ons are inflating the price too much. Or, they did not realize the expense involved because they need more than they originally thought. You can look into educating the customer before they place anything in the cart with descriptive text that explains the need and benefit for the extra items. We like to have an automatic message come up that says, "Customers who purchased this also purchased or looked at...". We also encourage bundling items together and offering them at a slight discount. If the customer is logged-in you have their email address. It is a good idea to follow up with an email and ask if they had any questions about the product they were looking at. You can make this a generic email that is sent to anyone who abandons the cart and make sure you mention that you have experience with the product or an expert who can help them. You could customize the email to point out any special offers you have or how they can save money with a bundle that they did not see when they were on your site.

There is a lot of room for closing deals when a cart is abandoned. We provide you tools but ultimately you, the site owner, knows what may entice a customer to return and consider making a purchase.

Freddy Uson is the Creative Director and owner of Uson Consulting, llc. Visit usonconsulting.com A Web Design & Creative Marketing business who offers web design, development, e-commerce, SEO and site optimization, marketing and all print collateral. Based in the Central New Jersey, Princeton, NJ area and serving all of NY/NJ. Contact us at (551) 265-8762 or email info@usonconsulting.com

As a business owner what frustrations do you encounter with Web Developers?

I wrote the question above in the previous posting with the hope that some business owners would share an issue or two so I could learn about what goes on out there and see if there's anything that repeats in general. I also posted the same question in various medical, physician, dental, imaging and marketing groups since I have a few clients in those areas. I got a reply from someone in the medical profession who suggested that I offer some examples or case studies rather than just link and direct the reader to the same question on my blog.

I understand the line of thinking this person is coming from because the number one rule in social media and blogging is to give out information. I believe my intent was reversed and I was hoping people would share insights and experiences with me instead. That did not happen and I admit I overlooked the number one rule in blogging as I mentioned.

So here are a few things my clients shared with me that frustrated them before coming to me. I offered them effective solutions.

1) Easy access to update and maintain content on the website.
Even though they may never touch the website, the site owner wants to know that they can roll up their sleeves and get into the pages. Some clients go into the content on a regular basis and may have an employee dedicated for that task as well. We create custom websites built on a platform that makes it very easy to manage and edit content. Many clients have had sites in the past that required knowledge of coding and traditional "web" languages in order to do anything with the website. Often that meant they needed to rely on a web developer, web master or have someone on staff with those skills. All of those options are costly whether you're looking at the hourly rates that add up or overhead costs of an employee or expenses in dealing with an agency. Effective websites that engage visitors and keep them coming back have fresh content updated on a regular basis. We make it easy and cost effective to self manage.

2) Unlimited toll-free Customer Support.
Clients can access and update content when they are on my platform but what if they need a little help? Sometimes a client wants to edit or tweak elements in the site that are more than just content edits. Many times I hear complaints when a site owner wants to make minor changes but has to spend quite a bit again for outside resources or staff-up and generate a lot of overhead. We solve that by offering Customer Support Experts, toll-free and unlimited for a low monthly flat fee. You simply call and ask to speak with an expert in either site editing, content management, email campaigns, SEO, social media or e-commerce. For a low fee you have experts at your disposal for as long as you need to show you how to modify and update your web site.

3) Everything you need for an effective online presence is included with your website.
Many of our clients came from situations that were difficult and expensive because every time they wanted to do something new, expand the website or market and promote their business they had to purchase additional services or buy add-on features. Our custom designed websites include everything you need built-in. No additional cost for e-commerce, creating and launching email campaigns, managing forms/collecting data and launching a mobile site. These are all features that typically are offered a-la-carte with other developers, agencies, etc. We have it all included with your website and ready to implement.

Feel free to contact us, info@usonconsulting.com or visit usonconsulting.com

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What frustrations do you encounter with Web Developers, Online Marketing and Management?

We have worked with several medical, dental, imaging practices, a surgical center, medical consultants and medical marketing individuals. Our clients are happy with the websites, online marketing, SEO and various creative collateral we created for them.

We know from past conversations that the investment and cost of maintaining an online presence is an issue when working with some web development companies. The other issue we hear is the difficulty or inability to maintain, monitor and adjust your website or marketing in an easy, cost-effective manner.

We would love to know what challenges or frustrations you may have come across (without pointing fingers) so we can improve and continue to offer effective Web Design and Creative Marketing.


Any feedback or examples are appreciated and we hope that your comments will ultimately help you or your colleagues. Feel free to contact us! We look forward to hearing from you.

Email info@usonconsulting.com | visit http://usonconsulting.com or enter your info below.

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Does your site have ineffective and useless keywords?

A client asked me recently if I could add some keywords to her website to drive traffic from searches. The assumption from her request was that I would add them without incurring additional charges to a site that was already very affordable. The site is fairly small, just a few pages and completed in record time before an event that was taking place.

This reminded me of a comic book I had when I was a kid from Archie Comics. You may recall, it was a group of teenagers named Archie, Betty, Jughead, Veronica, etc. There was a scene in which Archie walks into a CB and Ham Radio store and asks the sales person behind the counter, "what can I get for five dollars?" The sales person replies, "a fake antenna to put on your car so you can have the CB-look".

Just adding some keywords to a site will give you the SEO-look but it is useless and will not drive traffic to your site. I come across many sites that appear to have the SEO-look with words that the business owner or employee put into the header that seem to relate to the business but are not what people may search for. On the flip side these words may actually be exactly what everyone is putting into the searches but that can result in pulling many competitive sites as well so your site appears far down the list, many pages from the start of the results.

So what I recommend to clients (really a must) and often include as part of the new site or re-design is an "On-Site Optimization Package". This is the most affordable and smallest step to take in SEO (search engine optimization). Here is an overview of the work we do with this package.

Keyword Research:
- Review content on pages to create keyword phrases
- Run Analytics on specific pages/keyword phrases
- Edit/Modify Keywords/Keyword Phrases

Optimize Page Content:
- Edit content to reflect keywords/keyword phrases
- Integrate into titles, headings, description, alt tags
- Rename image files and re-link
- Check for broken links
- Add content next to images and/or videos for relevancy

Meta Tags:
- Embed Meta Tags based on the new keyword phrases into the code

Site Maps:
- Create and place link to an html site map on index page
- Create a XML site map and upload to Google, Bing and Yahoo


This is a very basic package and yet our clients get good results a short time after the work is completed. In general SEO is far more complex and requires an on-going monthly commitment in terms of work and investment. The package above is a good start and certainly far better than just throwing some keywords into the site.


Feel free to contact us; we'd love to talk about improving your website's search results. Uson Consulting. Web Design & Creative Marketing.