The holiday season is here — a time for online shopping and too often, online frustrations. If you’re in the retail/ecommerce space, you’ve likely experienced a scenario where your customer finds the perfect present, clicks on “Add to cart,” and then leaves your site. But how can you find out why?  

Unfortunately, this happens to online businesses all the time. Some businesses chalk it up to bad luck or simply take a guess at what has (or has not) happened — but this doesn’t help them resolve the issue or prevent it from happening again.  

Customers may churn for a number of reasons, but only with deep customer digital experience insights can you uncover the true reasons for cart abandonment. From an unclear interface to buttons not working to users who are actually attempted fraudsters, it’s critical to dive deep into the online behaviors happening across your web properties to succeed amidst a busy holiday shopping season. And when you provide a seamless experience for customers, they’ll keep returning to you throughout the year — not just during the holidays. 

Shoppers deserve a digital concierge — without even asking for it 

Tealeaf by Acoustic can help you experience your digital properties just as your customers do, enabling you to see why they abandon their carts. You can replay sessions to see exactly where the sale was lost then analyze those sessions, share your insights, and make recommendations to the appropriate internal team on how to fix the situation. Tealeaf's machine learning event engine monitors all critical behavior metrics, including software errors, failures to complete transactions, customer struggles, and more without requiring a single line of code.   

Multiple departments can benefit from Tealeaf insights. Your customer service department can watch a customer’s session, from login to cart abandonment, and then improve site design. For a major problem, your marketing department could create an email campaign announcing a site fix or improvement that is personalized to the customer’s experience. Your developers can also pinpoint and remediate bugs in real-time, reducing resolution time from weeks to hours. Bottom line: when you can see and understand why customers are struggling, you can optimize the digital experience quickly and effectively. 

Some problems aren’t as simple as fixing a broken button, so Tealeaf provides a search feature for querying sessions, enabling you to find and isolate a group of customers who have a shared experience. For example, searches could include a list of only those customers who were using a tablet when they abandoned or were using only the Chrome browser.  

You can add these behavior insights from Tealeaf into any marketing automation solution like Acoustic Campaign to create a customized campaign that targets the cause of cart abandonment, while also identifying and eliminating areas of struggle proactively. You can reach out personally to your customers based on their individual experience with a targeted message. For example, if someone abandons their cart due to a back-end checkout processing error, a traditional marketer might remind the customer of the items in their cart — only further annoying them. When you know the “why,” you can reach out, apologize for the processing error, and even offer a discount to make up for it. Immediately, your holiday-stressed customer feels heard and recognized. You’ve successfully taken a bad experience and turned it into a great one. The customer is now more likely to complete their holiday shopping, and your brand has exhibited mindfulness for your customers and their experiences.  

Some shoppers are being naughty, not nice

Unfortunately, fraudsters love the holiday season: one in four U.S. consumers report falling prey to fraud during the holidays, according to a survey by Experian. To help prevent this for your customers, you can fight fraud across your digital channels by proactively detecting anomalies, and then capturing shopping sessions on your network to help you better understand and manage those fraudulent activities. With Tealeaf, you can answer questions like: 

• What actions took place on your website? 
• What device(s) was the fraudster using? 
• What’s their IP address? 

You can set alerts when certain actions are taken and then share this information with your fraud prevention team or the appropriate authorities. Certain fraudster actions could also trigger a system response like making the loyalty account unavailable to the user.  

At the same time, not all anomalies indicate fraud; they might indicate changes you need to address. Why has traffic dropped or spiked? Why have transactions or revenue dropped? Has traffic from social media increased or decreased? Is traffic from organic search suddenly up or down? At that point, Tealeaf can help you sort through the data to discover if you actually have a problem. For example, a 20 percent jump in gift certificate purchases may be normal for your business on Black Friday, but unusual outside of that day. 

Dive deep into your customer's experience 

Seeing the digital experience you provide through the eyes of your customer can help you find the root causes of cart abandonment or customer struggle. You’ll then understand the reasons for lost revenue and can optimize the customer’s digital experience so they keep coming back for more, increasing their brand loyalty and customer lifetime value simultaneously. You’ll want to do this year-round, but it’s most welcome during a season when your customers are busy and stressed. By creating a seamless experience that allows them to shop quickly and then move onto other tasks, they’ll thank you for it. 

With Tealeaf, you can differentiate between user struggle and true abandonment to ensure you spend your resources effectively. Using heat maps and link analytics, you can visually interpret trends in customer behavior on any page, across sessions. You can discover new revenue opportunities when you’re alerted to unknown issues and obstacles to the customer experience, and then make the right changes to drive revenue. 

You can also drive efficiency and generate savings when you integrate online — or even brick-and-mortar — data with call centers to anticipate spikes or dips in calls. You can appropriately staff call centers and your teams can be prepared for the increased network capacity, enabling them to quickly resolve issues and reduce escalations.  

What are you waiting for? 

Many of our clients see investment payback in six months. That’s faster than it takes some folks to pay off their holiday bills! And you’ll be giving your customers an easier, more enjoyable, less stressful holiday season. It’s a win-win. 

Ready to get started? Learn how to add Tealeaf customer experience insights to Acoustic Campaign or your existing marketing automation solution by visiting our Help Center or reaching out directly to us today.