Aug 07 2008
Increasing Convertion Rate: A Guide for Zen Cart Users Part 1
So, you built your Zen Cart store. You have your online inventory of quality products. You have optimized your website in order to get substantial traffic. You are even running one or several PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns. Still, the problem remains, you are not generating enough sales as you would like.
If you are reading this, chances are your Zen Cart site is not currently producing the income that you are looking for. In this blog post I will cover some of the reasons why you might not be generating enough sales along with tips for Zen Cart users on what to do in order to optimize your shopping cart/checkout process.
In general, what we are trying to accomplish is to Increase the Conversion Rate of your site. Wikipedia defines Conversion Rate as follows:
In Internet Marketing, conversion rate refers to the number or percentage of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. Successful conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. To online retailers, for example, a successful conversion may constitute the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. To content creators, however, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity that occurs due to a subtle or direct request from the content creator for the visitor to take the action.
I’m willing to bet that you are probably not aware of the Conversion Rate of your Zen Cart store. Don’t worry, you are not the only one. In fact, some of the Top e-commerce marketers are unaware of it as well. When the experts at Marketing Sherpa surveyed 1,100 ecommerce marketers, they found out the average cart abandon rate was 59.8%. This measurement was the total number of shoppers who actually purchased divided by far larger number of those who put something into their cart. Click here to read more about Marketing Sherpa’s survey.
Each time consumers abandon their shopping carts you lose money. The reasons for abandonment vary from unexpectedly high shipping prices to forgotten usernames and passwords. Let’s look at some of the most important reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate (when a visitor initiates your checkout process but leaves before completing their purchase) as explained by some of the e-commerce experts throughout the web and then we will incorporate some Zen Cart techniques to solve each reason.
Here are some of steps that we are going to take in order to improve our Shopping Cart/Checkout process:
According to By Bryan Eisenberg in his article “20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment, Part 1“. One way to reduce shopping cart abandonment is to
Include a progress indicator on each checkout page. No matter how many steps in your checkout process, let customers know where they are in the process. Number the steps, and label the task clearly for each step. Give shoppers an opportunity to review what they did in previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they go back.
Zen Cart Tip #1: Download and install Order Steps - Tableless Authored by Clyde Jones. This contribution creates a Tableless graphical indicator on top of the page which lets your customers know where they are in the checkout process.
In the same article, Bryan also advices to
Provide a link back to the product. When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link back to the product page. Shoppers can then easily jump back to make sure they selected the right item. I was shopping for a printer and wanted to know how many and what color cartridges come with the printer. It wasn’t obvious where I should click to review the product description. I had to navigate using my back button until I got my questions answered.
and also to
Add pictures inside the basket. Placing a thumbnail image of the product increases conversions by as much as 10 percent.
This tip is also shared by Doug Williams in his article: “7 Ways to stop Shopping Cart Abandonment” although he goes into more detail as to why adding the products is beneficial.
Product Thumbnail Images: Make it easy for visitors to remember what they are purchasing. Display product thumbnail images next to the product names in the shopping cart as a visual reminder. Remember, visitors don’t know the product names as well as you do.
Zen Cart Tip #2: The Zen Cart shopping cart provides links to the products once they have been added to the shopping cart. You can see the link in the shopping cart page. But what happens when your customer is not in the shopping cart and wants more information about the product that he/she is about to purchase. There are several contributions which we can use to accomplish these issues. You can provide your customers with links to the product they have added to the cart as well as other products viewed by downloading and installing Recently Viewed Items sidebox. A much better way to accomplish the link to our product is by adding a thumbnail image linked to the shopping cart.
There are several contribution in the Downloads section of the Zen Cart website that in one will benefit our store. The Shopping cart sidebox with checkout button and product image is the most likely to accomplish what we want because not only provides a link to the product that has been added to the shopping cart but also displays a thumbnail image of the product. More importantly, it provides a checkout button (more about this technique later). The only drawback to this contribution is that the checkout button links to the shopping cart therefore you have to modify the file in order to link to the checkout process. This is an easy fix. If you download this contribution, open tpl_shopping_cart.php and replace the following code:
$content .= ‘<a href=”‘ . zen_href_link(FILENAME_SHOPPING_CART, ”, ‘SSL’) . ‘”>’ . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_CHECKOUT, BUTTON_CHECKOUT_ALT) . ‘</a>’;
with this code:
$content .= ‘<a href=”‘ . zen_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT_SHIPPING, ”, ‘SSL’) . ‘”>’ . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_CHECKOUT, BUTTON_CHECKOUT_ALT) . ‘</a>’;
But before you go ahead and install this contribution let’s consider another tip for your store.
Let’s talk about Free Shipping. The phrase “free shipping” is like a siren song to many who shop on the Internet. For whatever reason, a free shipping offer that saves a customer $6.99 is more appealing to many than a discount that cuts the purchase price by $10, says Wharton marketing professor David Bell in his article titled “How the Offer of ‘Free Shipping’ Affects On-line Shopping“. Consumers like free shipping offers, perhaps because it makes the online retail transaction more comparable with that at the neighborhood store. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that consumer behavior changes when shipping fees are imposed. With fees, shoppers will make fewer shopping trips and purchase more goods at a time — not unlike shoppers who drive great distances to a particular store, Bell says, and decide they had better stock up while they’re there. Alternately, fees can prompt consumers to simply walk away. A survey from 2004 found that shipping and handling costs triggered 52% of the abandonment of online shopping carts, Bell says.
Zen Cart Tip #3: Whether you would like to offer “free shipping” on your site is completely up to you. You should at least do some testing as to whether this is beneficial to your store and increases your conversion rate. If you plan to offer “free shipping” then you should let your customers know about it. You can accomplish this with either one of these contributions. The Cart Sidebox with Free Shipping Qualifier and Checkout Button Free Shipping Qualifier or the Shopping Cart Free-Shipping-Qualifier Sidebox.
Now, here’s why I wanted you to wait before installing “The Shopping cart sidebox with checkout button and product image” mentioned above. If you would like to follow Zen Cart tips #2 & #3, you have to do some modifications yourself. We are going to modify the tpl_shopping_cart.php file in order to display
- A thumbnail image of the product in the shopping cart
- A link to the product in the shopping cart
- A checkout button that actually links your customer to the checkout button
- A message letting your customer know that you offer free shipping. The message will read something like: “Add $XX.XX to your order and shipping is free”
So, lets download the Cart Sidebox with Free Shipping Qualifier and Checkout Button Free Shipping Qualifier. Open tpl_shopping_cart.php and find the following code:
$content .= $products[$i]['name'] . ‘</span></a></li>’ . “\n”;
and replace it with:
$content .= zen_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . $products[$i]['image'], $products[$i]['name'], IMAGE_SHOPPING_CART_WIDTH, IMAGE_SHOPPING_CART_HEIGHT) . ‘<br>’ . $products[$i]['name'] . ‘</span></a></li>’ . “\n”;
replace also the following code:
if ($free_ship_on == ‘false’) {
with this code:
if ($free_ship_on == ‘true’) {
Now upload the contribution to your includes/templates/YOUR CUSTOM FOLDER/sideboxes folder. In order to use this contribution you need to
- Log into your zencart admin and mouse over MODULES and go to ORDER TOTAL
- Click on the word “Shipping” and click the Edit button to edit
- Change “Free Shipping for Orders Over” to the amount that you want to begin offering free shipping. (Put “True” in the “do you want to allow free shipping” box) then click on update to save your changes.
- Make sure the shopping cart side box is enabled in Tools/Layout Boxes Controller.
By the time you read this I will probably have this contribution available for download either at the zen cart website or at the Free contributions section of the Ultimate Zen Cart website.
