Without question, Crate & Barrel’s checkout experience is a competitive advantage when contrasted against other furniture retailers.  Their checkout experience clearly echoes the beautiful, modern home products that they produce. Their conversion experience is reduced to its most basic parts and clearly speaks to the minimalist brand they’ve built over the years.

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This week, we’re examining a well-executed campaign by fromyouflowers.com. I like this campaign a lot. Flowers are often a time sensitive, impulsive purchase made by men when they are in trouble with their significant others. Shoot, maybe that’s only me. Anyway, purchases that have high emotional attachment and high time sensitivity are great candidates for abandoned cart remarketing.

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We’re back for another installment of cart abandonment email analysis.

This time around, we’re going to look at how Zipcar handles checkout abandonment on Zipcar.com. Zipcar is a subscription service that gives its customers access to vehicles on-demand. They’ve built an incredibly successful business by removing all of the headaches involved with automobile ownership. Zipcar members can access a car whenever they need one, but don’t have to worry about insurance, gas, or maintenance.

In order to sign up, Zipcar asks users to select a plan and complete a multi-step checkout process. Before the sign up process starts, they capture some basic information about the user and ask them to complete a profile.

For this example, I completed the initial registration and then abandoned later in the sign up process. Here are the criteria we’re using to critique the follow-up email campaign:

Timing – When were the emails delivered? How many of them were there? What was the interval at which they were delivered?
Design – A general critique of design language. Was the email branded? Plain-text? What visuals did the merchant use to entice me to re-engage?
Offer – At what point did the merchant use a promotion? How was it positioned?
Copywriting – What was the style/tone of the email? Was the copywriting clear? What was the subject line?
Social Proof – Did the merchant provide social proof? Testimonials? How were they presented?
Personalization – Was the email personalized to me? How did they capture that data? Did it specifically mention items I had engaged with on the site?
Call To Action – Was the call to action clear? What was the merchant trying to persuade me to do?

The Campaign

Approximately 3 days after abandoning the Zipcar sign up flow, I received this email:

After 8 days, they sent a second variation:

What I liked:

Copy: I really enjoyed the tone of these recovery emails. The copy is fun, quirky and drives people back to the Zipcar sign up flow.
Design: Simple, clear, plain-text. In many cases, these types of emails have higher click-through than HTML.
Call to Action: It’s very clear what Zipcar wants me to do after receiving this email. The CTA drops users right back into the sign up flow.

What I would test:

Timing: Our data shows that most leads go cold after 24 hours. I would test sending the first email using a much shorter time window (< 1 hour) after the abandoned sign up occurred.
Offer: Zipcar isn’t shy about using promotions to attract new customers. I would test offering to waive part of the Zipcar setup fee or giving some free drive time in the second email.
Social Proof: Zipcar has lots of high profile press it could use to reinforce its credibility. It would be interesting to test adding a couple of press logos or coverage somewhere in the e-mail.
Personalization: There is no personalization being used for this campaign.
Testimonials:  Zipcar has a lot of happy customers. Why not feature a couple of simple customer quotes expounding on how great the service is?

Zipcar’s campaign is an example of a simple cart abandonment email campaign designed to remind potential customers about their service. The biggest area for improvement is in the campaign’s timing. I would forecast that Zipcar would see a substantial uptick in recoveries if they sent the first email within 24 hours of the original abandoned sign up.

What do you think? Have you seen any abandonment campaigns in action? Let us know in the comments.

Since 1999, the 1-Click patent has generated billions of dollars in revenue for Amazon.com.

1-Click shopping removes the single biggest friction point for completing an online purchase: the checkout process.  Amazon filed the 1-Click patent in 1997 and it was granted by the USPTO in 1999. In fairly broad terms, it protects any E-commerce transaction executed with one-click using stored customer credentials to validate.

The result of this “innovation” is that Amazon achieves extremely high conversion from its existing customers. Since the customer’s payment and shipping information is already stored on Amazon’s servers, it creates a checkout process that is virtually frictionless.

But, wait a minute.

Is Amazon doing the rest of the world a disservice by enforcing a patent that makes the experience of shopping online so much more enjoyable?  No more fumbling through my wallet for a credit card, payment errors, multi-page checkout or silly upsells. Isn’t this the way the world should be? And doesn’t the idea of 1-Click checkout seem to be pretty obvious?

As is the problem with most software patents, Amazon was able to protect a fairly broad concept. The patent protects a “business method” vs. a specific invention. Not to mention, 1-Click technology could be helpful to every other U.S. online retailer in existence.

The Europeans agree. Amazon was never able to get the patent granted in the Europe in the first place. They’ve been appealing the decision since 2001 and were rejected again in 2011.

Despite the controversy, you can’t argue with that fact that this patent allows Amazon to provide a customer experience that is vastly superior to any other retailer in the U.S.  Why wouldn’t they protect that? Despite Amazon’s unwillingness to share, they are willing to “partner” with other retailers for a price.

Apple licensed Amazon’s 1-Click technology in 2000.  Apple felt that frictionless checkout was so important; it incorporated the tech into iTunes, iPhoto and the Apple App Store.  How many times have you impulsively bought a song on iTunes or downloaded a new iPhone app without even a second thought? You can thank US 5960411 for that Holiday Angry Birds download. Instant purchase drives orders. There’s no question.

But, our original question was how much?

In 2011, Amazon did $48.1 Billion in revenue. Let’s assume that 1-Click increases Amazon’s sales by 5% each year.  That’s an additional $2.4 Billion in annual revenue due to 1-Click. For the 12 months ending March 31, 2012 Amazon’s operating margin was 1.7%. That’s an additional $40.8 Million in operating income. And that number doesn’t include the licensing fees collected from Apple.

Together with Amazon Prime, Amazon has put forth what are probably the two biggest game changing products in online retail over the past two decades. The 1-Click patent is scheduled to expire in 2017, but my guess is that Amazon doesn’t really care.

They’ve already got their next innovation on the horizon: Same-day delivery. With that dagger, one has to ask if Amazon will put an end to local brick & mortar retail for good.

After all, how much more convenient could shopping get?

In case you haven’t read it yet, there’s a really helpful business book called Switch that teaches businesses how to create change when change is hard.

One of the lessons it teaches is about how more can be learned by studying what works well than studying what’s not working. It’s counterintuitive to most people, but basically, studying what works well produces better results than studying something that’s not working.

That’s why Rejoiner has decided to conduct a series of shopping cart reviews from the top online retailers. The alternative is to study mistakes that people are making online, but there’s much more that can be learned by studying what is working for the top online retailers.

Amazon is one of these companies. They’ve spent countless hours perfecting their digital selling techniques, and we’d like to study what’s working for them. We’d like to study their shopping cart system to see what features and best practices they employ. InternetRetailer.com ranks them as the #1 digitalseller, so we’re pretty sure there’s a lot we can learn from Amazon.

So without further ado, let’s begin our review of the Amazon shopping cart experience and see what we lessons can learn.

Starting with the Home Page

The first thing I noticed with the Amazon shopping cart experience is that it begins on the homepage. In the top right corner of the page, there’s a mini shopping cart that shows zero items when a visitor first lands on the site. This shopping cart is small, and doesn’t take up a lot of space.

Although it doesn’t take up much space, it communicates a lot in the small amount of real estate that it does take up on the page. It includes a picture of a shopping cart, a zero in the shopping representing the number of items in the cart, and a small black arrow next to the cart showing users that more information will be provided by clicking or hovering over the cart.

After further examination, you find out that hovering over the cart provides more information about what is in the cart (which in this case is nothing), and it also includes a button to view the full shopping cart in case visitors want to view the contents of the cart at any time.

Overall, through the use of a small but clear shopping cart icon that provides more information when hovered over, Amazon provides a very concise but clear picture of what the customers shopping status is. The button doesn’t provide too much information and doesn’t take up too much space, but it does communicate a lot to visitors about how to use the shopping cart. Amazon deserves an A++ for this mini-shopping cart experience.

To continue with the review, I’m going to view a book, Scientific Advertising, to learn how to add it to the shopping cart.

Adding Products to the Cart

In order to help customers add products to the shopping cart, Amazon provides a very easy to find “Add to Cart” section in the top right of the product page. This section stands out with a blue background that contrasts with the white background used on the rest of the page.

It includes two accented buttons in yellow and in orange that provide options for “Adding to Cart” and “Add to Cart with FREE Two-Day Shipping.” This section also includes the option to change the quantity and to sign in to enable “1-click ordering.”

Lastly, there’s an option to add the book to a wish list. Not many companies can do something like this, but Amazon is able to generate extra sales through their wish list system. Customers put books they want on a wish list, giving someone else (parents, grandparents, spouses, etc.) the opportunity to purchase the book (or product) for them. This is a great way for Amazon to generate extra sales and to alleviate the pain point many people experience when faced with the difficult task of attempting to purchase a gift for someone else.

Even though this “Add to Cart” section is simple, it effectively gives customers an easy way to add products to the cart, sign in, or add the product to a wishlist. Even though the design is simple, it’s highly visible on the page, and it’s placed in the right-hand corner which is where most customers know to look for a shopping cart or add to cart feature. It’s simple, but it obviously gets the job done since Amazon is the #1 online retailer.

At this point, I’m going to click “Add to Cart” in order to add Scientific Advertising to my shopping cart.

Beginning the Checkout Process

Now that I’ve added Scientific Advertising to my shopping cart, Amazon takes me to the first checkout page. On this page, they show:

1. How many items have been added to the cart (highlighted in bright green)
2. The order subtotal (highlighted in red)
3. A button for editing the cart (in case too many copies were added)
4. Another button for proceeding to checkout (highlighted in yellow)
5. An offer for exclusive financing
6. A list of recommended and related products

One thing that seems to be missing from this page is an option to continue shopping. However, since Amazon includes so many rows of recommended and related products (four to be exact), this page effectively becomes the “continue shopping” experience. Instead of taking people back to a store, Amazon brings the store to people and offers related and recommended books on this checkout page. They also include the highly visible search bar at the top of the page so visitors can search for another product if they desire to do so.

Even though there isn’t a clear call to action to continue shopping, which most businesses use to get customers to buy more products, Amazon does a great job of bringing related products to customers’ attention, while still keeping them moving forward in the shopping experience so that they don’t move backwards to continue shopping only to become fatigued or to lose interest. It makes a lot of sense to offer related products here and to encourage shoppers to check out if that’s what’s on their mind.

Since checking out happens to be the next step, I’m going to click “Proceed to checkout” to continue this review.

Signing in or Checking out as a Guest

The next page provides the option of signing in or checking out as a guest. Normally, I’d sign in with my Amazon account so that all of my purchasing information on file can be automatically used, but in this case, since I don’t want the whole world to see my purchasing information (sorry, the line has to be drawn somewhere), I’m going to check out as a guest. This also is good for the review since it shows the perspective of a first-time or non-frequent buyer.

It’s noticeable on this page that the checkout button says “Sign in using our secure server.” This text assures customers that their transaction is secure, and it’s a great way to allay any fears customers may have about shopping security.

After entering a fake e-mail address, I’m going to click “Sign in using our secure server” in order to check out as a guest.

Note: The next page asks me to register with Amazon, and I’m going to skip this step since it’s pretty standard and is quite boring.

Shipping Information

The next page after signing up for a new account asks for shipping information and includes most of the standard shipping and address information.

One of the things that I notice about this page is that it includes a step-by-step update of the checkout process at the top of the page. This includes “Sign in,” “Shipping & Payment,” “Gift-Wrap,” and “Place Order.” As each step is completed or is being completed, that step is shaded in with the Amazon orangish brown.

This is a great way to show customers how many more steps are required for checking out, and it’s something that every website should include. It’s easy for customers to become fatigued online, and this step-by-step feature is a great way to make sure customers don’t become disoriented and leave the shopping experience because they don’t know what’s coming next and how much longer it will take to check out.

This page also includes a question asking if this shipping address is the same one that’s used for billing. With a simple yes or no click on radio-style button, Amazon makes it easy to indicate whether or not the shipping and billing addresses are the same, saving customers the extra time of filling out their contact information again.

Next step, clicking “Continue” to proceed.

Shipping Options

The next page provides the following shipping options: standard shipping (3-5 business days), FREE two-day shipping with a free trial of Amazon Prime, Two-day shipping, and one-day shipping.

It’s interesting to note that Amazon does not show the cost of any of the shipping options. Most businesses would show how much shipping costs on this page, but for some reason Amazon avoids it. It’s possible they’ve found that more people click through when shipping costs are not included on this page since shipping can frequently be a deal breaker online.

Amazon also provides a check box to indicate if this item is being ordered as a gift. Checking this box provides an option later in the checkout process to customize the order in order to personalize the gift.

Another thing that’s noticeable about this page is the fact that each of Amazon’s checkout pages are stripped of any extra information and links. Instead of keeping customers in the store and giving them options to click around and add items to the cart, Amazon removes any type of distraction and focuses the entire page on moving the customer forward through the shopping experience. There are no extra links that can potentially distract customers and derail them from completing their order. This is critical for increasing conversion rates in any online shopping experience.

After choosing “standard shipping,” I’m going to click “Continue.”

Payment Options

The next step is to choose a preferred payment method. The options include: Credit or Debit cards, gift cards and promotional codes, Amazon Store card, and checking account. I’m a little surprised by the checking account option, but everything else is standard.

This page also includes a “Continue” button with the following text below it: “You can review this order before it’s final.” This extra text may seem simple, but it helps to assure customers that they won’t be charged until they’ve completed a final review of their cart. This is helpful because customers need an opportunity to double check the cart before checking out.

Reviewing the Order

The next page (and final page for me) is the “Review Your Order” page. This page gives customers the option to review their order and make sure everything is correct. It includes shipping information, billing information, estimated delivery date, an order summary, and the option to change shipping speed.

One thing that stands out to me is that I don’t remember being shown the cost for shipping until this page. As mentioned before, shipping cost is often a deal breaker, so Amazon has sneakily waited until this final checkout page to show me how much shipping will cost. Since I intended to buy the book anyway, I’m ok with it, but Amazon may be onto something here by not showing shipping cost to soon. It will be interesting to see if more online retailers begin using this method in the near future.

Since the shipping information is fake so this book would be shipped to someone else, I’m going to bow out at this point in the shopping process and wait to buy the book later.

Final Review

The Amazon shopping experience is very complete and advanced. Amazon does an excellent job of recommending related products to customers, and they do a great job of streamlining the process in order to get customers through the checkout process.

One thing that stands out is how stripped down and ugly the Amazon checkout pages are. Amazon is the #1 online retailer, but their checkout pages are super simple and even a little ugly. What this shows is that function should come over form when shepherding customers through the checkout process, and any links that can derail people from checking out should be removed.

I’m impressed with the Amazon shopping experience starting with the small and simple but effective mini shopping cart on the homepage and ending with how well Amazon gets people through the simplified, stripped down checkout pages. Anyone who is interested in improving an online store should spend some time to study Amazon and learn what works for them because it’s clear that Amazon is the online retail industry leader for a reason.

About the Author: Joseph Putnam is a freelance copywriter and internet marketing consultant who writes compelling content that converts for web pages, blog posts, e-mail newsletters, sales letters, and more. Visit his website, 5 NorthMarketing, to receive free internet marketing advice, and follow him on Twitter and Google+ to stay in touch.

I’ve had a question for a month or so that I haven’t been able to find a good answer for. Just how big is the Internet Retailer 500?

In February, the US Department of Commerce reported that consumers spent $194.3B online last year. I want to know what kinds of businesses generated that revenue. Is it a few large retailers like Amazon & Apple? Or, is it thousands of niche retailers?

My theory was that the Top 500 internet retailers generated 60% of that $194.3B in 2011. In order to validate my hypothesis, I spent some time researching revenue figures for the Top 1000 retailers.

Turns out Internet Retailer lists the Top 1000 retailers each year and makes those numbers public here. However, in order to download the Excel file with all of the data, one needs to purchase $150 in reports. Turns out I’m cheap.

You think I won’t tally all of these manually, Internet Retailer? Really? Here’s what I found when I did just that:

 Assumptions

• $194.3 Billion was spent online in 2011 (US Department of Commerce)
• The Internet Retailer Top 1000 is an accurate representation of the top retailers in the country. (High likelihood that there are successful retailers who aren’t on the list)
• The Internet Retailer Top 1000 accurately reports revenue for each of the listed companies. (Possibility of some deviation)

The Numbers

 Interesting Data Points

• Turns out my guess was low. The Top 500 internet retailers represent 77% of total retail sales in 2011. The Top 500 tallied $150B in revenue.
• I was surprised by how little impact #500-1000 had on the percentage of total sales. They only had a combined $2.47B in sales.
• 1000 and beyond is still a large market opportunity (22% of total sales) and represented $41B in 2011.
• Amazon was at the top of the list by far with $34.2B in revenue.
• #1-#500 ranged from $34.2B-$10.4M in revenue
• #501-#1000 ranged from $10.3M-$161K in revenue

What do you think of these numbers? Surprised? Know of a better dataset to use? Would love to start a dialogue in the comments.

Recently, I was at a dinner with friends when a conversation started that caught my attention.

My wife and some of her friends started talking about how much they liked free shipping. It went something like this:

“I love that I get free shipping from Target with my store credit card,” one of them said. “It makes buying stuff so much easier. It’s awesome.”

“Yes,” someone else responded, “free shipping is the best. I rarely buy stuff unless it has free shipping.”

The conversation continued, but these quotes give a general idea about how it went. Later, I asked my wife more about it to get her take on free shipping.

“It’s awesome. The cost of shipping is the number one barrier to my buying things online. Right next to it is the fact that you can’t try stuff on. Basically, you don’t ever like to feel like you’re paying extra. Even better is websites that say free return shipping. That’s important for clothes.”

Armed with my new primary research, I was curious to learn how important free shipping is for online retail. I knew that Zappos has had a lot of success with free shipping and free return shipping, but I didn’t know how much of an impact free shipping has on online retail sales. To figure this out, I decided to do some research. Here’s what I found…

The Reasons Customers Abandon Shopping Carts

Let’s first of all be clear about one thing—online retail is a challenging business. It’s lucrative with Amazon leading the way earning $48.1 billion in revenue in 2011, but it’s also challenging.

Online customers are finicky and abandon shopping carts for many reasons. AlixPartners recently conducted a survey where they found the following top reasons that customers chose not to order from an online retailer or other mail-order businesses (catalog, TV program, etc.):

1. Need to see or touch the item before purchasing (37%)
2. Cost of delivery too high (36%)
3. Concerns about quality or freshness of a product (26%)
4. Ease of returning the item (20%)
5. Loss or damage in transit (17%)
6. Concerns about the size or fit (16%)
7. Better selection in local store (15%)
8. Concern about getting the right part or item (13%)
9. Better total price in local store (13%)
10. Installation service unavailable (11%)
11. Arranging for removal of old item (11%)
12. Difficult to get item into the house once delivered (10%)
13. Not at home during the day to receive shipments (10%)
14. Too long to deliver (10%)
15. Service on item after purchased (9%)
16. Concern with getting a different item than ordered (7%)
17. Privacy concerns (4%)
18. Can’t track the item while in transit (3%)
19. Weekend delivery required (3%)

As this list shows, there are a number of reasons that lead customers not to purchase online or through mail order, and shipping costs are near the top of the list.

The second most cited reason for not purchasing online (or mail order) is shipping costs being too high. Since free shipping completely wipes out this hurdle, it’s safe to infer that free shipping would impact whether or not these 36% of customers convert from an abandoned cart to a sale.

Moving on to the ninth item on the list, 13% of people said they didn’t purchase because total cost was cheaper at a local store. Since free shipping lowers the total cost of items purchased online, it’s again safe to infer that free shipping would impact these 13% of purchases. There’s no way to know how many of these customers would convert to buyers, but we can assume that free shipping would make a difference for some of them.

AlexisPartners also found that “75% of consumers shopped from home last year, and nearly one-third of those make online purchases at least once per month.” Out of this group of home shoppers, 95% said that shipping costs impacts their decisions, with 64% saying it greatly impacts their ordering decisions and 31% saying it somewhat impacts their ordering decisions. Based on these results, you can see that shipping costs play a significant role in online retail purchases.

Now that we’ve seen this impact that shipping costs have for online and mail order purchasing, let’s move on to consider two more studies that show the influence free shipping has on conversion rates and cart sizes.

The Impact of Free Shipping on Conversion Rates and Cart Sizes

Usability Sciences conducted a study on shipping costs with one of their online retail clients. They found two main reasons customers abandon a cart. First, customers abandoned when they couldn’t find what they were looking for; second, customers abandoned when shipping options weren’t acceptable. Here are more details from the study:

Our study found that 56% of all shoppers browsed for products, but only 19% placed an item in their cart. The most cited reason for this first level of abandonment was, “I can’t find what I’m looking for.” Of this 19% only 7% of shoppers completed their transaction. The most cited reason for this second level of abandonment was, “the shipping costs and options were unacceptable.”

As you can see, unacceptable shipping costs and options was the leading reason conversions dropped from 19% to 7%. Some of these shoppers dropped out for other reasons, but better shipping options, including free shipping, would have had an impact on these 12% of abandoned orders.

In another study, Usability Sciences found an increase in the number of items added to shopping carts and an increase in cart prices after free shipping was offered. Here are the details from this study:

The average number of items in the cart was 3.7 with an average ticket price of $142.93, versus 3.4 items and a ticket price of $118.29 when free shipping was not offered.

Clearly, not only do shipping options influence conversion rates, but free shipping also influences the number of items customers put into their carts and the overall value of those items.

How Long Will Customers Wait for Free Shipping

Even though free shipping is enticing to some customers and will convince them to buy when they wouldn’t otherwise, there’s another factor that comes into play when shopping online—how long the product takes to arrive.

Not only will customers abandon a cart if the shipping costs are too high, they’ll also abandon a cart of the shipping takes too long. Even if the cost is free, shipping that takes longer than customers are willing to wait can be a deal breaker. If it’s a time sensitive product, customers will choose to buy the product locally, even if the cost is higher.

So how long are customers willing to wait?

In the same AlexisPartners survey mentioned previously, shoppers were asked the following question: “When buying from an online store, catalog, or television program or commercial, what is the maximum delivery time you are willing to accept in order to receive free shipping?” The results are as follows:

• One week – 50%
• 5 days – 24%
• 4 days – 12%
• 3 days – 9%
• 2 days – 4%

Based on these results, 50% of shoppers are willing to wait up to one week as long as they receive free shipping, but the other 50% drew a line for the amount of time they were willing to wait. And even though the results are split 50/50 between one week and less than one week, 86% are willing to wait between 4 and 7 days for their order as long as they receive free shipping.

Wrapping It Up

From these studies we’ve learned that shipping costs are one of the top factors determining whether or not people make a purchase online or through mail order. If the costs are too high, customers may choose to purchase locally.

We’ve also learned that shipping costs increase conversion rates and impact the number of items and the total dollar amount that’s added to shopping carts. From this we can conclude that free shipping helps customers get over the shipping cost hurdle and also entices them to buy more products.

Lastly, we’ve learned that, even though free shipping has a positive impact on conversion rates and cart additions, there’s a limit to what customers will accept for free. Even if they don’t have to pay for it, some customers aren’t willing to wait five to seven days to receive their products.

Based on these studies and the primary research from the beginning of this post, we can conclusively say that free shipping has a significant impact on online retail sales. Whether or not it’s right for your business is something for you to decide, but there’s a good chance that offering free shipping will get more visitors over the hurdle of shipping costs and convince more of them to become buyers. The question is this: what difference will it make for you? Only through experimenting and testing will you know for sure.

About the author: Joseph Putnam is a freelance copywriter from Orange County, CA. He helps businesses write compelling blog and website content, and he also writes persuasive website copy, sales pages, and e-mail campaigns. If you’re looking for a writer who can connect with visitors and turn traffic into leads and sales, visit 5 North Marketing to get in touch today.

Photo Courtesy of Jow