And it\u2019s not just Cyber Monday anymore, more and more customers are shopping earlier\u2014Thanksgiving is the fastest growing online shopping day of the entire \u201cCyber Week\u201d. In fact Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are all predicted to shatter records again this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n So what does all this mean for your business? Well, for one thing, it means if you aren\u2019t optimizing your e-commerce site ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you\u2019re leaving money on the table. Even though it\u2019s already November, there\u2019s still time to optimize your site and take advantage of the increased holiday shopping, convert more visitors into customers, and improve your bottom line.<\/p>\n But where do you start? One KPI you shouldn\u2019t ignore is cart abandonment<\/strong>, or the users who add items to their carts but never make it through the checkout process.<\/p>\n 2 out of 3 people will abandon their shopping cart<\/a> for one reason or another, including unexpected costs, security concerns, and poor page load times.<\/p>\n Joshua Bixby of Unbounce<\/a> notes that \u201c1 out of 5 of your customers will abandon their shopping cart if your pages are too slow,\u201d which translates to around $3 billion lost each year to slow load times. Not sure if your cart is too slow? Check it out for yourself with Google Page Speed Insights<\/a>. By just typing in your URL, you can get an overall score from Google and analyze the best possible routes of speeding up your pages.<\/p>\n If you find that speed is not the problem, that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean all is well with your cart. 44% of carts are abandoned because of expensive shipping costs, according to David Callaway<\/a>. Visitors could be abandoning for an array of reasons, but the key is to understand why before you make any changes. In 2012, Worldpay surveyed 19,000 consumers and identified numerous reasons for cart abandonment<\/a>. Luckily, most issues are easily corrected, including:<\/p>\n unexpected costs \u2014 56%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n website navigation \u2014 25%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n website crashed \u2014 24%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n processes taking too long \u2014 21%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n excessive security checks \u2014 18%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n concerns about security issues \u2014 17%<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The easiest approach to reducing cart abandonment is to ask visitors why they\u2019re leaving the cart in the first place. Qualaroo<\/a> makes it easy to diagnose the issues that are hurting conversions by asking unobtrusive survey questions of shoppers right in the moment. You can ask people who are about to abandon their carts\u2014as well as those who successfully completed their purchase\u2014to gain the insights you need to improve conversion rates. Here\u2019s how.<\/p>\n You can use Qualaroo\u2019s exit intent detection to serve a Qualaroo Nudge to users who are about to browse away from your page or close the window. When a user goes to leave you can ask them a question about why they\u2019re leaving without completing their purchase. Simply ask the following question:<\/p>\n You can use an open text field to capture their feedback. If you start to see some patterns emerging in the responses, you can later update your Nudge to offer pre-determined responses.<\/p>\n The answers you find might surprise you. One Qualaroo client learned that a code-level issue was preventing users from checking out on some browsers. That fix saved them approximately $60,000 in revenue<\/a> this year alone.<\/p>\n It might seem counterintuitive to survey people who made a purchase when you\u2019re trying to understand why people don\u2019t purchase; but your customers are a great source of insight for uncovering what almost kept them from buying.<\/p>\n On the order confirmation or Thank You page, simply run a Nudge that asks:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat almost kept you from completing your purchase today?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Again, use an open text field to find out what hesitation your customers had when deciding to complete their purchase. One shopper\u2019s hesitation is another\u2019s reason to abandon, so use this feedback to improve your site\u2019s messaging, user experience or other elements to reduce abandonment.<\/p>\n Cyber Week mobile shopping will be up 40% from last year<\/a>, a trend that will surely continue. Is your site ready to cater to the mobile shopper? If not, you\u2019re missing out.<\/p>\n The good news is you can check your mobile commerce health with Qualaroo for Mobile Web<\/a>. You can deploy the same checkout surveys to your mobile users to determine if there\u2019s an issue getting in their way.<\/p>\n The best part of Qualaroo for Mobile Web is that it doesn\u2019t take the visitor to another page and off-task to collect feedback. Questions are answered right on the page, ensuring that they\u2019re able to quickly get back to what they were doing on your site.<\/p>\n Once you have feedback from your surveys, you\u2019ll want to implement changes to address user concerns and run some simple A\/B tests to see what changes move the needle. Tools like Optimizely<\/a> can help you get results quickly and easily. Be sure you establish a baseline conversion rate for your cart first, so you\u2019ll be able to accurately measure improvements and gauge what works and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n When you find a winner, codify the change and move on to the next source of user hesitation and abandonment. With just a couple of weeks left, you still have time to get your cart into shape to make sure you capitalize on the biggest online shopping week of the year.<\/p>\n![\"USOnlineSalesPrediction\"](\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/USOnlineSalesPrediction.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat Causes Cart Abandonment?<\/h3>\n
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Fixing Cart Abandonment<\/h3>\n
Survey Shoppers About to Abandon Their Cart<\/h4>\n
![\"Abandon\"](\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Screenshot-2016-10-12-11.50.26.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Screen\"](\"https:\/\/qualaroo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-04-08-at-3.55.06-PM.png\")
<\/p>\nSurvey Shoppers Who Completed a Purchase<\/h4>\n
Don\u2019t Forget Mobile Users<\/h3>\n
Putting Feedback into Action<\/h3>\n