Recover Cart Sales Module

Recover Cart Sales searches for shopping carts which had items placed in them but which were never checked out -- in other words, potential sales that were lost. The Module will then send an email to those customers who abandoned their carts, reminding them of the items they had been shopping for and asking for feedback to help you improve your store. The Module then generates a report showing you how many of these abandoned orders were subsequently completed.

Although this product was primarily designed to track carts abandoned by clients who were logged into their accounts, the Module can also track the carts of some "guest" customers and others who bypassed the option to create an account. Because it uses customers' email addresses, it can track any abandoned cart as long as a valid email address was entered on the shipping information page.

Installation

IMPORTANT NOTE - Install this module ONLY on CRE Loaded v6.2 with Patch 13.1 (SP1) or higher! This product is not compatible with earlier releases.

CRE Loaded fully integrates Modules into the base program, so installing the Recover Cart Sales Module (or any Module) is very easy.

Once you have purchased and downloaded the Module, unzip the files and use your ftp client to upload the files to your store. Log in to your store, go to Admin => Modules => Add-Ons, highlight the Recover Cart Sales Module, and click "Install."

Configuration

To configure the options for this Module, go to Admin => Modules => Add-Ons. Highlight "Recover Cart Sales" and click "Edit." You will see a very long menu with the following options:

Parameter Name	Default Value	Explanation
Enable Recover Cart Sales Module	False	Select True to turn on the Recover Cart Sales Module.
Look back Days	30	Number of days to look back from today for abandoned carts.
Skip Days	5	Number of days to skip when looking for abandoned carts. Using the default values, the Module will search for carts abandoned between 5 and 30 days ago.
Sales Results Report Days	90	Number of days the Sales Results Report takes into account. A large number may cause the Module to take a very long time to generate the results.
Use Calculated Taxes	False	When set to "True" the Module will calculate tax based on a customer's location when determining prices. Note that this calculation may not be correct due to difficulty in determining the customer's location.
Use Fixed Tax Rate	False	Use a fixed tax rate when determining prices (the rate is set below). This option will be overridden if Use Calculated Taxes is set to "True."
Fixed Tax Rate	7.00%	The fixed tax rate to use when Use Fixed Tax Rate is set to "True." Enter a decimal value, without a "%". This option will be overridden if Use Calculated Taxes is set to "True."
E-Mail Time to Live	90	Number of days to continue reporting emails as having been sent.
Friendly E-Mails	True	If "True," the customer's name will be used in the email greeting.   If "False," a generic greeting will be used.
E-Mail Copies to		If you want to receive copies of the emails that are sent to customers, enter your email address here. Leave the field blank if you do not wish to receive copies of the emails.
Show Attributes	False	If your product listings include attributes and you want to show them in the emails and reports, set this to "True."
Ignore Customers with Sessions	False	Select "True" to check for and ignore customers with an active session (i.e., who may be actively shopping on your site) when compiling reports. You must have access to the folder and files defined in the session configuration section to check for active sessions.   Select "False" to skip checking for session data; this will use fewer resources and generate your reports faster.
Current Customer Color	#0000FF	This is the color in which to display customers who have purchased items from your store in the past. Use hexadecimal HTML color codes.
Uncontacted Highlight Color	#9FFF9F	This is the color in which to display customers to whom the Module has not sent an email. Use hexadecimal HTML color codes.
Contacted Highlight Color	#FF9F9F	This is the color in which to display customers to whom the Module has sent an email. Use hexadecimal HTML color codes.
Matching Order Highlight Color	#9FFFFF	This is the color in which to display entries that may have matching orders (see below).
Skip Entries w/Matching Orders	False	A matching order is essentially one where the abandoned cart contains one or more items that match items a customer purchased on a subsequent visit to your store. Select "True" to leave matching orders out of the Module's reports.  Select "False" to include all abandoned carts, including those with matching orders, in the reports. See"Determining Matching Orders" below for complete details on this option.
Autocheck Safe Carts to Email	True	Select "True" to automatically check entries which are most likely safe to email (i.e., not active customers, not previously emailed, etc.). You can manually uncheck entries to which you do not want to send an email. Select "False" to leave all entries unchecked. You will have to manually check each entry to which you want to send an email.
Match Orders From Any Date	True	Select "True" to include any matching order regardless of the date of the completed order. Select "False" to consider as a matching order only completed orders placed after the date of the abandoned cart.
Pending Sales Status	1 (Pending)	The highest value that an order can have and still be considered pending. Any value higher than this will be considered a completed sale for purposes of determining matching orders.
Report Even Row Style	dataTableRow	Enter a style for the even-numbered rows in reports. Typical options are dataTableRow and attributes-even. Note the use of CSS Styles rather than colors.
Report Odd Row Style		Enter a style for odd-numbered rows in reports. Typical options are NULL (no entry -- this will leave a blank line between rows for easier reading) and attributes-odd. Note the use of CSS Styles rather than colors.

Using Recover Cart Sales

Using the Recover Cart Sales Module involves four simple steps:

1. Run the Module
To run the Module, go to Admin => Customers/Orders => Recover Cart sales and click "Run Recover Cart Notifications."

2. Select the customers you wish to contact
The list of abandoned carts will show the name and email address of the customer (or just the email address for a "guest" cart where a customer name is not available), the date they created their cart, the items in the cart, and the amount of the abandoned order. It will also display customers who have already been contacted in a different color (the default is red) along with the date on which you sent the email.

When you are selecting customers to email, you can click on a customer’s name to check their customer records to find those who have ordered from you many times, or use order amount to find those customers who were going to place large orders and, for instance, send all of these customers a special email offering a discount coupon if they complete the abandoned order. See Step 3 for more information on this.

3. Send email to those customers
Once you have selected the customers to whom you wish to send email, click "Send E-mail." Read over the default email and make any changes you want, then click "Send."

The default email is in the guise of a request for feedback, along with a reminder of the abandoned items. Because you will be sending an unsolicited email to your customers, we recommend this low-key approach over a more aggressive plea to finish buying the products.

Customers may have abandoned carts for a variety of reasons: they may simply have decided against making a purchase, they may have purchased the item elsewhere, they may have purchased the same item from you under a different customer account, or they may have returned to your store later and bought a different item. In addition, carts can sometimes be listed as abandoned because the payment processing failed -- in which case, the customer may not realize the problem, and may be waiting for you to deliver the item. In any case, a low-pressure, friendly approach is more likely to keep your customers happy and result in a recovered order than are hard-sell tactics.

Remember, because the Module needs email addresses, it is returning carts primarily from existing customers or new customers who were serious enough about purchasing that they created customer accounts. Establishing -- and maintaining -- customer loyalty is the key to any successful business.

The email message form includes a postscript field where you can enter additional text. You can use this field to add a phone or email contact for customer service, or as mentioned in Step 2, to offer a discount coupon to customers who complete their abandoned orders. While you can also do this in the body of your email, using the PS field keeps you from having to constantly re-edit your default email message.

This message will be attached to your e-mail after the signature line, and the system will add only the text you enter, so you should begin this field with "PS: ".

4. Generate the Report
To generate the Report on how many abandoned carts have been recovered after you send reminder emails, go to Admin => Reports => Recover Cart Sales.

The Report will show the number of people that you have contacted, the number of conversions, the overall conversion percentage, and the customers’ names with links back to their customer records so that you can check the results.

Determining Matching Orders

A matching order is essentially one where the abandoned cart contains one or more items that match items a customer purchased on a subsequent visit to your store. Technically, this Module defines a matching order as one in which:

• the order contains one or more items in the abandoned cart
• the order information matches either the cart's customer name, email address, or database ID
• the order was placed after the abandoned cart
• the order status is greater than the pending status

Orders that are "pending" (as defined in Configuration) are not counted as matching orders because they may in fact be abandoned carts -- if, for instance, a customer selected PayPal as their payment option but never completed the transaction on the PayPal site.

If you choose to show matching orders, they will displayed in a different color (the default is green) along with the order status. You may decide to filter out matching orders so that you do not send emails to customers with matching orders ("Skip Entries w/ Matching Orders" in Configuration) to avoid inadvertently sending an email to anyone who has already completed the abandoned order.

Even if you have chosen to filter out abandoned carts with matching orders, you may occasionally see an entry highlighted in green; the status of these entries will be marked "Pending" rather than "Complete." These entries denote abandoned carts with a later order by the same customer for matching items which also has not been completed. You should check the date on these orders -- it is possible that the customer very recently completed the purchase and the payment is being processed (in which case the order will be considered a matching order. However, if the order was created several days ago, the customer either abandoned the order a second time, or an error has occurred with the payment processing. In either case, you will want to contact the customer.