X-Cart forums

[plathw]

This is something that I've been looking for and it seems like there isn't any think like this out there for xcart...we would like a mod that tracks carts where the customer put in all of their information and then stops the order (abandon) at the payment page.

We would like for it to do an auto email the next day, and then another one two weeks or so later, listing the products the customer had in the cart at the time and a letter asking them to call us if they have any problems.

Any thing like this out there?

[balinor]

Man I hate sites that do that...you SURE you want to go that route? I don't know of a mod that does it, but it could probably be custom coded fairly easily.

[plathw]

Yeah, I try to be the least intruding as possible, but the numbers in terms of increased sales are just too positive to not try it. I'm pretty sure it could be modded as well, but didn't know if there was something out there already.

[carpeperdiem]

How will you know the customer's email? Are you talking about REGISTERED customers who abandon their carts? If i were the customer, I'd call this spam... but that's just me.

[plathw]

At the point they get to the CC, they have entered all of their information, including email address.

I understand that point of view, but we are in a very niche market and if someone gets to that point in the cart, they want what we have to sell. A lot of times when people call in that have been on the site they end up calling in because they have questions or weren't really confident using their credit card over the internet. This gives us an opportunity to nudge them and give them options to contact us.

It's the same thing a lot of bigger companies do and is suggested in multiple e-marketing mags (dmnews, sitepoint, etc). I fought it for a while now, but like I said before, the numbers from what I've been reading are just too good to pass up. You can look at it as spam, or you can look at it as a service...if something is stopping them from buying, we want to eliminate whatever that is. I mean, it's not a trick, so if it increases sales then I consider it providing a service to customers or they wouldn't be buying

[balinor]

Good argument, but it can work against you just as easily as it can work for you. If you don't show shipping charges at the cart level, many people may be forced to register to see the charge, and then perhaps they leave after they see the price. One way to help with this is to provide a shipping calculator before checkout or at the product level if you don't have it already.

I, for one, refuse to buy from a site that sends me an e-mail asking me to complete my purchase. If I wanted to complete the purchase, I would have done it while I was there

[Jon]

To avoid this issue, you could add a checkmark to your register page that says something long the lines of:


[ ] Allow administration to email you as needed to help facilicate your order.


Then in the follow up email you could say:

You are receiving this email because during registration with us you opted to allow us to contact you to help facilicate your order, and you recently began an order which was not completed. ...

Then in the footer:

To avoid receiving emails like this in the future, simply login to your account and modify your profile and uncheck this option.