Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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From: Nick Usborne

Subject: Cart abandonment

> This is an extensive research study that at last gives me some

> real %s based on factual studies... Most firms are able to convert

> only 2-3% of online traffic to paying traffic.

        - Kevin Condon, LED 2086

I was interested to read Kevin Condon's post about shopping cart

abandonment. This has always been a big problem for online

retailers. It is particularly irksome for those studying the site

metrics...and seeing so many people leaving the site at "the last

moment".

One thing you can do is add elements to your shopping cart pages

that continually reassure the purchaser. If you have joined

BBBOnline, this is the place to show their logo. HackerSafe logos

and the like also help.

I have also seen some companies add short and relevant testimonials

to these pages with some success.

Of course, the best thing you can do to increase shopping cart

conversions is to keep the process as short as possible. Don't ask

for information unless you absolutely need it for the purpose of

completing the transaction. If you want to collect additional

personal information, ask for it AFTER the sale has been completed.

For those prospects you do lose, you may want to consider a shopping

cart recovery email program. That is to say, you collect their email

address at the very beginning of the process, and then email those

people who don't complete the process. There may be some ethical

questions to think about here, but the process can be very

successful.

We tested the email recovery approach recently and achieved a 263%

increase in the recovery of abandoned carts.

You can see the full report and all the data here:

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/see/1116

Best wishes,

Nick Usborne

www.marketingexperiments.com

------- new post - same topic -------

From: John Arrowsmith

Subject: Shopping Cart Abandonment

> The link is very long but here

> is the Google search term...

        - Kevin Condon, LED 2086

The following TinyURL is hopefully even better :)

http://tinyurl.com/acxlo

With best wishes

John Arrowsmith

------- new post - same topic -------

From: Tom Aman

Subject: Cart abandonment

> One of the conclusions related to shipping and

> in particular offering incentives such as "Buy any

> 2 Products and Get Shipping For Free".

        - Kevin Condon, LED 2086

I have run into a number of sites where shipping is extra but the

actual shipping cost is not stated on the site and can only be

determined by starting into the checkout process.

I suspect that one of the reasons people abandon carts is because

the only way they can get the total cost of what they might order is

by actually proceeding to the initial checkout phase. If the total,

including shipping, etc., is more than they are willing to pay, then

they just abandon the cart at that point.

On many sites it is impossible to determine a total cost without

going at least that far in the shopping process. By having an offer

such as "Buy any 2 Products and Get Shipping For Free", the problem

of knowing total cost without going to the checkout is solved so the

shopper is more likely to actually complete the sale.

Tom Aman

Aman Software

http://www.cyberspyder.com

------- new post - new topic -------

From: Scott Marino

Subject: Secure servers

> I've often wondered why... no one has

> ever discussed the ins and outs of installing

> security certificates on host servers / websites?

        - Bill Davison, LED 2086

If you process credit cards, you must have a secure key and encrypt

all credit card data. This is a legal requirement of

Visa/MasterCard, American Express, Discover and all the rest. There

are actually some very stringent rules regarding it that you can get

from your merchant bank.

Security and privacy, especially online, is such a hot issue in the

press. The public is cautious about providing any information

online, much less credit card details over an un-secure link.

Not providing secure check-out and encrypting stored information is

like turning off the alarm, leaving the door unlocked, and hoping no

robber will notice.

In past dealings with Verisign and installing the secure keys, it

can be a real challenge. This is actually a good thing as it keeps

anyone from getting a secure key. You have to prove your

authenticity before getting one. Image if it were easy for all these

phishers with their E-bay, Paypal and other bank scam e-mailers to

get a secure key.

Scott Marino, President

www.webundies.com

------- new post - new topic -------

From: Will Bontrager

Subject: PHP and SSI

This response is lagging, I realize, as the OP has been answered.

For those who might have additional related questions about what SE

spiders see and don't see, our "What Search Engine Spiders See" tool

at http://willmaster.com/sbot (redirect) provides certainty.

Plus, it can generate word counts and lists and keyword density.

It's bookmark-able and recommend-able.

Will Bontrager

==== BILLBOARD ===================================

<Moderator Comment>

Since this post is so long, I've split it up into two parts. Here's

part one, stay tuned for part two later in the week.

-adam

----------------------

From: Tom Aman

Subject: Fighting Spam

Hi Adam

The recent posts re Internet scams reminded me that I had intended

to share my experiences in figuring out how to deal with SPAM.  This

is a very long post, but I feel the info might be of use to many

LEDers.

First, a definition of SPAM.  There is often disagreement among

individuals, but from the many SPAM fighting sites, there is usually

agreement that all UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is not SPAM.

SPAM is considered to be UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email), meaning email

that is sent by the thousands, automatically, to one or more large

email lists.  For example, if I visit your site, discover a lot of

broken links and, as a result, email you suggesting you try my

software, that is UCE but it is not SPAM.  On the other hand, if I

used one or more of the many lists available and blindly sent a

message flogging my software to thousands and thousands of people

without ever seeing their sites or knowing if they might find it

useful, that is UBE and would definitely be SPAM.

This all started because I have an email account that received so

much SPAM that I was considering abandoning it so it meant that it

was a good one to use for some serious research.  If things got

worse, I could drop the account, if they got better, I could keep it

active (my first choice).

First, I decided to really check out some SPAM filtering software to

see how good a job it would do.  That exercise in itself was

revealing.  One problem is that the trial period for many of the

filters is really too short to make a really good judgement call.

Most of the filters claim accuracy rates in excess of 99%, but with

a single exception, I never found one that achieved that level of

accuracy.  On doing more checking, the reason for the difference

between the filter's claims and the actual experience was relatively

clear.  During development, to test the accuracy of a filter, the

typical approach is to have 4 or 5 thousand emails available that

are about 1/2 SPAM.  The filter is then designed to filter this

sample set with a very high degree of accuracy and with few or no

"false positives" (good email identified wrongly as SPAM).  The

problem with this approach is that the accuracy depends on the user

actually receiving SPAM that is similar to the mix used in the test

set.  If the SPAM a user receives is significantly different, the

success rate will be different and very likely lower.

Filters try to identify SPAM and, depending on the filter and with

one exception that I found, can either delete it or direct it to a

specific folder so it can easily be reviewed.

One filter I tested extensively over a long period claimed an

accuracy rate of 98% at the outset, rising to 99.8+% after training

and a "false positive" rate of less than .01% (1 in 10000).  First,

the question is, in the less than 1 in 10000, does that mean 10000

emails, SPAM included, or 10000 good emails.  Makes a big

difference.  Over the test period of 65 days, I received 12,953

emails of which 170 were actually good (12,783 SPAM).  The false

positive rate (8 emails), even based on the 12,953 count was .06%

but based on the 170 was an alarming 4.7%.  And the SPAM

identification rate average out at 78.5% (nowhere near the 99.8+%

claimed).

The best filter I found claimed an accuracy rate of 99.9+% after

training. This filter is the one exception mentioned above.  It does

its thing with the email, you correct any errors it may have made,

then tell it to process. The email is still on the mail server at

this point and it will delete those marked as SPAM by you or the

filter.  Then you start your email client and download the good

stuff that is left.  Even after entering all "friends" (from your

address book), this filter is all over the place the first few days

but it learns very rapidly, usually in 3 or 4 days.  I actually

achieved an accuracy of 98.7%, close to that advertised, during the

test period.  However, being more agressive in its filtering, the

false positive rate was a bit higher coming out at 10 emails (.077%

of 12,953, 5.88% of 170).  I have continued to use this filter and

am now running at 99.7% with a false positive rate of about .007%

(or about .15% of good emails).  Much better, but still not perfect.

 This filter is called a Markovian filter, one step beyond the more

common Bayesian filter and can be found at http://www.spamrip.com.

I am using Version 1, the current download is for Version 2 and I

will be downloading that shortly.  It is free.

My conclusion after all of this was that I would never, ever trust

any filter (Brightmail included) to just delete SPAM without me

having a chance to review its choices.  Even the best will

occasionally register a "false positive" and, with my luck, that

would be the most important one I would ever receive.

Tom Aman

Aman Software

http://www.cyberspyder.com

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