iknowthe.net | Internet and Ecommerce Consultant

Google iphone search. Interesting stuff.

I’m an Archers fan and was recently featured on BBC Radio 4 waxing enthusiastic about the decision to finally podcast the Archers. Yeah me.
Seriously though tying up with RealAudio years ago just tied the Beeb to a rather crappy commercial platform while giving Real a huge opportunity to grab market share. Streaming sucked, and there were ways around it anyway. I didn’t say all this, as I didn’t get chance, but hey, its a good thing they changed to good old mp3.

I got an email the other day:  

Hello Emma, I came across your web site and was curious to understand your view on shopping cart abandonment and what is being done to address this.        

 I thought it was an interesting question. Here’s my reply: Well, shopping cart abandonment is a real problem – but the solutions depend on the cause of the problem. Typical issues relate to users simply saving items to find later, or using the checkout to find shipping costs, but other factors such as a too-long registration form, complicated password requirements, a lack of a progress indicator, etc. etc. all build a picture not conducive to the customer contentedly completing the transaction. When I’m analysing a checkout, I look at webstats data or if n/a then a representative set of server log files (day/week/month depending on the size of the site) to analyse every page in the checkout process to see where the drop off is in the checkout page – e.g is a particular page causing problems, or is is constant throught the checkout – and what can be done to combat any problems. I also look at the site from a usability perspective, and assess security and billing arrangements. All of these elements will be a factor in dropout.
You will always have some abandonment, but you can take steps to minimize it. 

I’ve finally taken the plunge and moved from MovableType to WordPress. I’ve been meaning to so this or a while, as WordPress integrates so well with the rest of the web, plus I was using a heavily customised but older version of MovableType and the comment spam if I enabled any kind of commenting was just incredible. Despite all my customising, the move had been seamless, and I’m really pleased with the new system. Adding plugins to do cool things and customise the blog is really easy. Got any cool wordpress plugin tips? Leave me a comment below.  

Techcrunch Where I won an ipod nano yesterday. Thanks guys