Question: Free + Shipping Dropshipping

bobo4u · Apr 24, 2017

Hi guys,

I've just launched a eCommerce store with the free + shipping method, drove some traffic to it and just wanted to share the stats with you from the last 2 days.

Total traffic to website: 1k users
Bounce rate: 48%
Pending orders: 8
Processed orders: 2
Abandoned carts : 317

The thing is that I find the number of abandoned carts rather disappointing, and I think that it's because the nature of the offer. What do you guys think about this numbers and are there any ways to reduce the number of abandoned carts and increase conversions or is this something natural when you have this kind of offers?

Thanks in advance!

SmoothKriminal · Apr 24, 2017

bobo4u said:
Hi guys,

I've just launched a eCommerce store with the free + shipping method, drove some traffic to it and just wanted to share the stats with you from the last 2 days.

Total traffic to website: 1k users
Bounce rate: 48%
Pending orders: 8
Processed orders: 2
Abandoned carts : 317

The thing is that I find the number of abandoned carts rather disappointing, and I think that it's because the nature of the offer. What do you guys think about this numbers and are there any ways to reduce the number of abandoned carts and increase conversions or is this something natural when you have this kind of offers?

Thanks in advance!

You got 2 sales? How long since you launched?
That is a TON of carts abandoned...

I'm 3 days after launch of my store but not a single sale. I'm not doing the free + shipping but they may be the issue... at least for me

Lunaaa · Apr 24, 2017

Free plus shipping in my opinion is stupid. It's so over done now so it's alot harder. And the profit margin is way to small. With free plus shipping, that amount of abandoned carts is normal

bobo4u · Apr 24, 2017

SmoothKriminal said:
You got 2 sales? How long since you launched?
That is a TON of carts abandoned...

I'm 3 days after launch of my store but not a single sale. I'm not doing the free + shipping but they may be the issue... at least for me

The website has constant traffic for some time but the store was launched 2 days ago. Btw what niche are you in?

Lunaaa said:
Free plus shipping in my opinion is stupid. It's so over done now so it's alot harder. And the profit margin is way to small. With free plus shipping, that amount of abandoned carts is normal

Yes after seeing these results, free + shipping really looks stupid, but I'll just test it for one week to se how it goes. What is an abandoned cart rate that a regular ecommerce store has?

kninemark2 · Apr 24, 2017

There's a couple of things that could be happening.

Most likely it's that the shipping is too high and turns it from 'free' into a purchase ( I'm assuming they don't know what the shipping is until they get to this point).

You can counter this by reinforcing the value and cost of the item you are giving away.

Away from this you might have too many fields, distractions or not enough trust signals.

On the distractions you should take away every link on the checkout page leave them with two choices buy or go back.

Whilst you are on the checkout page you want to reinforce the value proposition and remind them why they are buying. Testimonials are great here.

You can also invest in abandoned cart software which sends follow up emails to those that don't buy.

Alternatively if it's an option an exit intent pop on this page could assist with conversation if you can offer some kind of discount on the s&h.

I'd also take advantage of retargeting/remarketing pixels.

That's kind of generic advice, what are giving away?

Sephrata · Apr 24, 2017

Lunaaa said:
Free plus shipping in my opinion is stupid. It's so over done now so it's alot harder. And the profit margin is way to small. With free plus shipping, that amount of abandoned carts is normal

I'd agree with you for the most part - but there are still people doing it successfully. I saw a shared Facebook ad with over a million views for free watches. Site and product nothing special, just their ad went viral and got shared a lot.

bobo4u · Apr 24, 2017

kninemark2 said:
There's a couple of things that could be happening.

Most likely it's that the shipping is too high and turns it from 'free' into a purchase ( I'm assuming they don't know what the shipping is until they get to this point).

You can counter this by reinforcing the value and cost of the item you are giving away.

Away from this you might have too many fields, distractions or not enough trust signals.

On the distractions you should take away every link on the checkout page leave them with two choices buy or go back.

Whilst you are on the checkout page you want to reinforce the value proposition and remind them why they are buying. Testimonials are great here.

You can also invest in abandoned cart software which sends follow up emails to those that don't buy.

Alternatively if it's an option an exit intent pop on this page could assist with conversation if you can offer some kind of discount on the s&h.

I'd also take advantage of retargeting/remarketing pixels.

That's kind of generic advice, what are giving away?

Thanks for the advise! I will try and improve the checkout page and see if that helps. Also I think that paypal doesn't help either because users have to go on their site to make the payment.

Sephrata said:
I'd agree with you for the most part - but there are still people doing it successfully. I saw a shared Facebook ad with over a million views for free watches. Site and product nothing special, just their ad went viral and got shared a lot.

Well I also saw some similar "viral" ads on facebook but the issue is the actual conversion rate. There is no rule that says that if you have 1m views on facebook you will make money for sure.

kninemark2 · Apr 24, 2017

bobo4u said:
Thanks for the advise! I will try and improve the checkout page and see if that helps. Also I think that paypal doesn't help either because users have to go on their site to make the payment.

Agree with you on PayPal it's added friction. It may be worth checking to see if there is a way to keep them on site. What platform are you using?

Alternatively could you not use something like stripe?

I found the best results came when i have a few payment options.

As a complete left field idea have you thought about ordering a small amount of stock yourself?

You can still do free plus shipping but there are more advantages on the back end. Drop shipping can leave $$$$$ on the table.

bobo4u · Apr 24, 2017

kninemark2 said:
Agree with you on PayPal it's added friction. It may be worth checking to see if there is a way to keep them on site. What platform are you using?

Alternatively could you not use something like stripe?

I found the best results came when i have a few payment options.

As a complete left field idea have you thought about ordering a small amount of stock yourself?

You can still do free plus shipping but there are more advantages on the back end. Drop shipping can leave $$$$$ on the table.

Currently I use woocommerce which is not bad, and I think that a direct payment gateway on the website seems to be the best option. Paypal it's so easy to integrate but it creates friction with the customers.

The store was launched a couple of days ago and I don't think that it's a good idea to purchase stock because frankly I don't even know if the method is sustainable or not. Are you doing free + shipping also?

kninemark2 · Apr 24, 2017

Yeah I offer a few products as free plus shipping but mainly I buy products off Aliexpress and sell them on.

One of the sites I run sells pet accessories for small dogs.

For this site I offer a dog paw pendant as my free plus shipping offer. The reason I carry stock is that the benefits outweigh the costs.

When someone orders the pendant I put it in a branded box and ship it too them. This increases the perceived value of the item and also means it arrives quicker. Aliexpress items tend to come in crappy plastic mail bags.

Another benefit is that I can include marketing materials with the pendant.

In each package i send a couple of discount codes for items on the store and a postcard.

The postcard has a picture of a dog on it with an offer of a 'free matching dog collar'.

To get the dog collar they just have to follow the instructions on the postcard (which is essentially share on social media).

When they do this I then send them another free plus shipping offer.

At each stage I'm upping the lifetime value of the customer and spreading the word of my business on social media.

On my website I only stock about 50 items and when I started I just bought 3-5 of each item.

My full start up costs were under $200.

What I like is because I'm establish a brand I can charge fees higher than my competition. I'm selling for $25 things you can get on Amazon for $8 and more importantly customers are happy.

It was a poster on WF (quadagon) that showed me the above as I had originally intended to just do free plus shipping with an aliexpress plugin.

With regard PayPal there used to be a plugin that kept them on your site. I'll see if I can find a link.

Lunaaa · Apr 24, 2017

Sephrata said:
I'd agree with you for the most part - but there are still people doing it successfully. I saw a shared Facebook ad with over a million views for free watches. Site and product nothing special, just their ad went viral and got shared a lot.

Yes but I do doubt they made much because of the low profit margin of $4-$6. Then minus the ads and fees and they maybe made $1- $2 per sale .

Its the upsell that would bring the most amount of $ and email marketing

bobo4u · Apr 25, 2017

kninemark2 said:
Yeah I offer a few products as free plus shipping but mainly I buy products off Aliexpress and sell them on.

One of the sites I run sells pet accessories for small dogs.

For this site I offer a dog paw pendant as my free plus shipping offer. The reason I carry stock is that the benefits outweigh the costs.

When someone orders the pendant I put it in a branded box and ship it too them. This increases the perceived value of the item and also means it arrives quicker. Aliexpress items tend to come in crappy plastic mail bags.

Another benefit is that I can include marketing materials with the pendant.

In each package i send a couple of discount codes for items on the store and a postcard.

The postcard has a picture of a dog on it with an offer of a 'free matching dog collar'.

To get the dog collar they just have to follow the instructions on the postcard (which is essentially share on social media).

When they do this I then send them another free plus shipping offer.

At each stage I'm upping the lifetime value of the customer and spreading the word of my business on social media.

On my website I only stock about 50 items and when I started I just bought 3-5 of each item.

My full start up costs were under $200.

What I like is because I'm establish a brand I can charge fees higher than my competition. I'm selling for $25 things you can get on Amazon for $8 and more importantly customers are happy.

It was a poster on WF (quadagon) that showed me the above as I had originally intended to just do free plus shipping with an aliexpress plugin.

With regard PayPal there used to be a plugin that kept them on your site. I'll see if I can find a link.

Thanks for info, will definitely modify the store to increase conversions. I saw that PayPal Advanced has an option to pay directly on the website page. Unfortunately for me I don't have an US account so I cannot use it, but it can be a useful tool. Link here: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-payments-advanced

Lunaaa said:
Yes but I do doubt they made much because of the low profit margin of $4-$6. Then minus the ads and fees and they maybe made $1- $2 per sale .

Its the upsell that would bring the most amount of $ and email marketing

Yes that's true, I also run a web dev business and I can relate to that. The money is in the follow-up.

MoneyMagnet4life · May 17, 2017

hey I see you are using woo commerce for free plus shipping do you have any up sell in your funnel

bobo4u said:
Hi guys,

I've just launched a eCommerce store with the free + shipping method, drove some traffic to it and just wanted to share the stats with you from the last 2 days.

Total traffic to website: 1k users
Bounce rate: 48%
Pending orders: 8
Processed orders: 2
Abandoned carts : 317

The thing is that I find the number of abandoned carts rather disappointing, and I think that it's because the nature of the offer. What do you guys think about this numbers and are there any ways to reduce the number of abandoned carts and increase conversions or is this something natural when you have this kind of offers?

Thanks in advance!

One things that works 1. Create another listing of the same product with the regular price. 2) As already indicated your checkout page should be a sales page with testimonials and reinforce the values. 3) The 317 people that did not buy - use the abandon cart email sequence and then have an email sequence in place where you give value. you can convert the 317 to warm leads by building a relationship. Make your offer page pre frame them. 4) Use stripe or braintree for payment gateway

Question: Free + Shipping Dropshipping

bobo4u

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SmoothKriminal

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Lunaaa

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bobo4u

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kninemark2

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Sephrata

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bobo4u

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kninemark2

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bobo4u

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kninemark2

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Lunaaa

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bobo4u

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MoneyMagnet4life

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