191: How Our Ecommerce Store Performed In 2017 With Steve Chou

Podcast: Download (Duration: 30:23 — 42.0MB)

The fastest way to reduce cart abandonment is to phone the people who abandoned and ask them why. I did it twice at Bumblebee Linens in 2017, and every fix that came out of those calls was something no analytics tool would have surfaced.

Shoppers were losing their coupon codes between the landing page and checkout. Others balked at $8 monogramming on a $15 apron. Several were on phones without PayPal and had decided to finish the order later at home.

This is part two of a three-part series breaking down how my businesses performed. Revenue grew 20% year over year, profit grew 14%, and traffic rose 10.5%.

This episode covers those abandoned cart calls and the changes they produced, a wheel of fortune popup that lifted email signups 131%, replacing half an employee with automation software, and the two platform problems that cost me traffic.

A note on timing: this is a 2017 recap published in early 2018. Some tools and thresholds have changed since. The diagnostic approach has not.

Key takeaways

• Revenue grew 20%, profit grew 14%, and traffic grew 10.5%, with margins roughly flat.
• Calling abandoned cart customers closed the sale almost every time someone was willing to talk.
• Shoppers forgot coupon codes between the landing page and checkout, which auto-applied coupons fixed immediately.
• Monogramming at $8 on a $15 apron read as expensive, so raising the apron price and dropping monogramming to $5 removed the objection.
• A wheel of fortune popup raised email signups 131% and doubled pre-purchase sequence revenue.
• Lowering the free shipping threshold without losing money worked by extending free shipping to 4 to 10 days and pricing faster tiers above it.
• WinTask automation eliminated 2 to 4 hours of daily data entry, so a fourth employee was never hired.
• Push notifications for abandoned carts produced an 8% click through rate and a 22% conversion rate.

Why call customers who abandon their cart?

Because they will tell you things your analytics never will, and a surprising number buy on the spot. My close rate on anyone willing to actually talk was extremely high.

I ran these calls twice in 2017, both times after noticing abnormally high abandonment on specific campaigns. Facebook apron ads showed it early in the year, and a blogger’s Facebook post showed it again later.

The script was simple. I said we had just introduced our apron line and wanted feedback in exchange for a significant discount.

Not everyone was receptive. I got hung up on several times and a few people were genuinely annoyed, and a decent percentage had a candid conversation with me.

My wife hates that I do this. I take one for the team, because every time I stalk our customers something useful comes out of it.

It made me consider staffing it permanently. Email abandoned cart sequences work, and getting a person on the phone converts at a level email cannot match.

Why shoppers abandon carts over coupon codes

They receive a code on a landing page, spend time configuring a product, and forget the code by the time they reach checkout. Then they hit the back button, cannot find the landing page again, and give up.

Personalization made the gap worse. Deciding what to monogram on an apron takes real time, and the code fell out of working memory during it.

A second group could not find where to enter the code at all. I deliberately keep that field unobtrusive so shoppers do not go hunting for codes on sites like RetailMeNot.

How auto-applied coupon codes reduce checkout friction

Apply the code automatically when someone lands from the promotion, then tell them repeatedly that it is applied. I built this the day after the calls.

Reassurance is half the fix. Every page carries a line confirming the coupon will be applied at checkout, and it appears again on the cart page and during checkout itself.

That combination closed the loop entirely. Nobody has to remember a code, and nobody has to trust that an invisible discount is real.

How do you lower your free shipping threshold without losing money?

Extend the delivery window on the free option and price the faster tiers above it. My free shipping now quotes 4 to 10 days, with first class and priority available at a premium, and I raised express rates as well.

The insight came from Mike Jackness. It works because urgency and price sensitivity are different customers.

The results held up over the holidays. Many shoppers who qualified for free shipping paid for faster delivery anyway.

Audience is what forced the change. Our wedding customers are price insensitive and a $800 free shipping threshold never bothered them, and the apron audience coming from a deals blogger cared a great deal.

We set the new threshold just above one apron. Buying a mother’s apron and a daughter’s apron together earns free shipping, which also raises order value.

Why monogramming price perception matters more than the dollar amount

An $8 monogram on a $15 apron reads as expensive even though the absolute cost is small. More than half the product price going to personalization is what shoppers react to.

A customer on the phone told me this directly. When I asked whether a slightly more expensive apron with cheaper monogramming would have changed her decision, she said yes.

So we adjusted both numbers. The apron price went up modestly and monogramming came down to $5, which removed the psychological objection without changing much economically.

Why mobile shoppers abandon checkout without PayPal

They do not want to type an address and card number on a phone, so they postpone the purchase until they are at a desktop. Several women I called said exactly that.

They all shop on their phones otherwise. Amazon has trained them to expect stored details, and a manual mobile checkout feels like work by comparison.

That is why I am looking at Amazon Pay. I am uneasy about handing Amazon my order data, and the number of shoppers already living inside that checkout is hard to ignore.

Google Maps autocomplete was the immediate fix. Typing a few characters populates the full address, and it took one day to implement.

How a wheel of fortune popup increased email signups 131%

Visitors trade an email address for a spin at winning store discounts, and the gamification does the persuading. Signups rose 131% after implementation.

Revenue followed the list growth. Our pre-purchase sequence generated more than double what it had the previous year.

The mechanics are adjustable in a useful way. You can weight the probabilities so the largest prizes come up rarely.

Building it was the hard part in 2017. No simple option existed for non-Shopify stores, so I coded my own, and popup tools now include it as a standard feature.

How push notifications perform for ecommerce

Abandoned cart notifications produced an 8% click through rate and a 22% conversion rate, which is the strongest segment by far. All of this runs on top of email rather than replacing it.

Browse abandonment converts less but reaches more people. Those notifications saw a 12.24% click through rate and a 6.21% conversion rate.

General promotions trail both. Periodic sends inviting people to shop drew a 3.4% click through rate and a 1.88% conversion rate.

The setup is product-aware rather than generic. You upload your catalog, and someone who viewed a Christmas handkerchief without buying gets a reminder about that specific product four hours later.

How to replace an employee with automation software

Find the repetitive data entry nobody has questioned, then script it. I noticed an employee spending 2 to 4 hours a day retyping personalization details from our website into the old PC application that drives our sewing machines.

Legacy software looks unautomatable and often is not. I found WinTask, which scripts actions on a Windows PC, and it handled the application fine.

The workflow is now one button. Our site exports a file, the script runs it, and every personalized order gets typed in automatically.

The savings were concrete. We had four employees in 2016 and ran 2017 with three, because that fourth hire became unnecessary.

Being physically present is what surfaced it. I only noticed because I walked into the office to help out, which is also why I plan to spend more time there cutting waste.

What happens to traffic when you switch your store to SSL?

Mine dropped 15% immediately and took about a month to recover. Google was pushing the change, so it had to happen regardless.

The blog side showed nothing comparable. Moving MyWifeQuitHerJob.com to SSL produced no traffic change at all, which is why the store result was so surprising.

One month of the year was effectively lost. July was the worst of it, and everything returned to normal after roughly four weeks.

Why Pinterest traffic dropped and what changed

Pinterest changed its algorithm and both traffic and conversions fell sharply. Organic traffic still has not fully recovered.

The ad pixel changed separately. I discovered it only when data went missing from my reports, and reimplementing it took real time.

The new pixel is more sophisticated for a reason. Pinterest now tracks each product a shopper views, whether they reach checkout, and whether they complete the purchase, matching what Facebook and Google already do.

Ads recovered even though organic has not. My Pinterest campaigns convert again post-reimplementation.

How do influencer campaigns actually perform for a small store?

Hit or miss, and worth continuing because the cost can be near zero. Neither of my two 2017 campaigns was a home run, and neither required cash.

The YouTube deal was structured as wholesale. A cooking YouTuber running a subscription box bought our napkins at cost and linked to them below the video, so we broke even on the box and sold to people who wanted a full dozen.

The blogger campaign traded on personal connection. A friend of a friend wore a personalized apron during a Facebook Live craft session and posted our promo video to a fan page with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Both were profitable and neither moved overall sales much. Their real value was pushing me back into talking to customers directly.

Should you grow by adding products or improving marketing?

Adding SKUs is the fastest route and improving marketing is the calmer one. Doubling your product count is the standard way ecommerce businesses double revenue.

I have chosen marketing for several years now. Running ads across Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Pinterest, doing conversion optimization, and writing sales copy build skills that transfer to any business I run.

New product lines carry stress I do not want. Launching many at once is logistically taxing, and I would rather spend that time with my family.

Steady manageable growth is the goal. That said, we just returned from the Canton Fair with new vendors, so a couple of new products may appear if the stress stays manageable.

Frequently asked questions

Does calling abandoned cart customers work?

Yes. Nearly everyone willing to have a conversation completed their purchase, and the reasons they gave produced site fixes that no analytics tool would have revealed.

What is the most common reason shoppers abandon a cart?

In my store it was coupon friction. Shoppers forgot their code between the landing page and checkout or could not find where to enter it, then gave up rather than hunting for it.

Should coupon codes be applied automatically?

Yes, when the shopper arrives from a promotion. Apply it on arrival and confirm on the cart and checkout pages that the discount is already active.

How do you offer free shipping without losing money?

Give the free tier a longer delivery window, in my case 4 to 10 days, and offer paid faster options above it. Many shoppers who qualify for free shipping still pay for speed.

How much can a wheel of fortune popup increase email signups?

Mine increased signups by 131% and more than doubled revenue from the pre-purchase email sequence.

What conversion rate do ecommerce push notifications get?

Abandoned cart notifications converted at 22% with an 8% click through rate. Browse abandonment converted at 6.21% and general promotions at 1.88%.

Does switching to SSL hurt SEO?

It can temporarily. My store lost about 15% of its traffic and recovered in roughly a month, while my blog saw no change at all from the same migration.

Are influencer campaigns worth it for small ecommerce stores?

They are worth testing repeatedly since results vary widely. Both of my campaigns turned a profit without any cash outlay, and neither meaningfully moved total store sales.