Shopping Cart Abandonment Gamesmanship

Consumers are smart. If you play games, they will figure them out, exploit them, and then tell their friends.

In this Internet Retailer article, Don Davis looks at the results of a Shop+ survey that shows that shoppers—especially millennials—are crafty deal-seekers. For instance, 47% of consumers ages 18-34, and 37% of all shoppers, intentionally leave items in an online shopping cart in hopes that the retailer will come back with a better offer.

I spoke with Don for that article, explaining why offering incentives in shopping cart abandonment emails is a bad practice:

“The biggest problems with including incentives in shopping cart abandonment emails is that they train customers to delay purchases and train them to be more price-sensitive,” I said. “The former causes you to lose sales to competitors, while the later causes you to give away margin needlessly.”

I recommend using cart abandonment emails as a service tool, rather than a promotional tool, in order to avoid teaching your customers bad habits that cost you money. For instance…

>> Read the full article on InternetRetailer.com