The Biggest Problem in eCommerce
The biggest problem in eCommerce is cart abandonment, with speed a close second. But the consequences of a slow site occur higher in the funnel. In other words, it's not clear that once you walk into a store that you're ready to purchase something. But if you put something in your cart, we're pretty clear about your intent. So while a slow website is certainly a problem, cart abandonment is a bigger one.
Today there are countless solutions that focus on solving cart abandonment. They all work in the same way: they ask for a prospect's email early in the process and if a cart is started and abandoned, they send emails to that prospect to bring them back to the store.
People abandon carts for several reasons:
- They get distracted – for example, kids come into the room, demanding our attention
- Our stores distract them – for example, we ask for coupon codes – driving them off our sites
- They get frustrated – for example, our shipping timelines or costs frustrate them
It's hard to believe that the best model for solving this problem is to chase people with more emails. Monetate's research (2018) suggested that if you don't get a prospect back to your store within 7 days, it's game over.
[Tweet “If you shrink the time that people spend on checkout, you'll skip past distractions and frustrations.”]
But if you imagine this dynamic in a retail environment, it's akin to someone running out of the store chasing me, calling out my name, and offering me a coupon to come back in and make a purchase. It might work. But not often. And the coupon would have to be pretty darn good.
Fast.co creates the world's fastest checkout
In the third quarter of the year, Fast.co launched a solution (Fast Checkout) to solve this problem in a completely different way.
Instead of chasing prospects, yelling as they walk away from your store, they looked to solve the main problem that leads to cart abandonment.
The logic is pretty simple – if you shrink the time that people spend on checkout, you'll skip past distractions and frustrations.
If you've ever made a purchase on Amazon, you likely have experienced one version of a one-click checkout. It's a fantastic experience because all of the friction disappears. And it doesn't stop me from making a more complicated purchase (split payments, send to someone else, etc).
[Tweet “@fast is solving this problem on a broader scale.”]
If you've ever made a purchase at a Shopify store where you allowed Shopify to save your payment and address info, you've likely experienced another version of a one-click checkout. You quickly realize, when on a different Shopify-powered store, that they're a Shopify store because you can do a one-click checkout.
But both of these solutions are tied to those specific platforms.
Fast.co is solving this problem on a broader scale. It's not tied to a specific implementation or specific platform. It's available across a variety of platforms and even works with custom solutions (with their Javascript integration).
Last Week in WooCommerce
This past week, Fast.co went further and announced their integration with WooCommerce.
[Tweet “Cart abandonment dynamics will change because @fast has removed the friction that people have experienced when checking out.”]
This is the WooCommerce that Automattic CEO, Matt Mullenweg, articulated as facilitating, “over $20 billion in sales so far this year. More than double the year before,” in his State of the Word, last week. In the same session during the Q&A, WooCommerce CEO Paul Maiorana highlighted that WooCommerce powers more than 2 million carts.
That's the space that Fast.co is stepping into. I once told you about the changing costs of building an online store, and how it had changed over the last 20 years (from 100k to 1k).
Imagine what the next twenty years look like when cart abandonment isn't 7 out of 10 – a stat that hasn't changed in forever. Imagine when cart abandonment is 2 out of 10.
That will never change because we've written eloquent emails that encourage people to come back to our store.
Cart abandonment dynamics will change because Fast.co has removed the friction that people have experienced when checking out.
If you haven't yet signed up for it, make sure that you do. And tell your friends. And ask the stores you visit to consider adding it.
Because the faster we all make the change, the faster everything will be.