Tracking Abandoned Shopping Carts

[Vince Salese]

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned shopping carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[Jim]

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and data/moreip
directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are removed on a
periodic basis depending on the value set by the merchant in the
Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart screen. The default value
is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in the back office of the store are
accessed, a check is made to see if there are any shopping carts older
than the number of days specified and if so they are removed. No report
is generated that says how many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to do. Who
knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side tracked and
decided to come back later to finish the order or if they just decided
to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was picked as the default value
because most people probably wouldn't come back after that long to
finish an order. If you have a store getting lots of traffic and a fair
number of abandoned order, the number of abandoned carts could use up
considerable disk space so you may want to set the time perion shorter
than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the number
of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain in the
data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than the value you
set for the automatic removal. There is no tool available that would
allow you to get information out of the carts to determine what was in
the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned shopping carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[powerstream]

So what are the differences between the files in the data/ip and
the data/moreip files?

Jim wrote:

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and data/moreip
directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are removed on a
periodic basis depending on the value set by the merchant in the
Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart screen. The default value
is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in the back office of the store are
accessed, a check is made to see if there are any shopping carts older
than the number of days specified and if so they are removed. No report
is generated that says how many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to do. Who
knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side tracked and
decided to come back later to finish the order or if they just decided
to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was picked as the default value
because most people probably wouldn't come back after that long to
finish an order. If you have a store getting lots of traffic and a fair
number of abandoned order, the number of abandoned carts could use up
considerable disk space so you may want to set the time perion shorter
than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the number
of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain in the
data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than the value you
set for the automatic removal. There is no tool available that would
allow you to get information out of the carts to determine what was in
the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned shopping
carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[jim]

The ip directory files contain the product information for the order and
the moreip directory files contain the shopper information and order totals.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So what are the differences between the files in the data/ip and
the data/moreip files?

Jim wrote:

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and data/moreip
directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are removed on a
periodic basis depending on the value set by the merchant in the
Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart screen. The default
value is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in the back office of the
store are accessed, a check is made to see if there are any shopping
carts older than the number of days specified and if so they are
removed. No report is generated that says how many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to do.
Who knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side tracked
and decided to come back later to finish the order or if they just
decided to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was picked as the
default value because most people probably wouldn't come back after
that long to finish an order. If you have a store getting lots of
traffic and a fair number of abandoned order, the number of abandoned
carts could use up considerable disk space so you may want to set the
time perion shorter than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the
number of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain in
the data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than the
value you set for the automatic removal. There is no tool available
that would allow you to get information out of the carts to determine
what was in the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned shopping
carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[powerstream]

So do one of these represent completed orders, or started orders?

jim wrote:

The ip directory files contain the product information for the order and
the moreip directory files contain the shopper information and order
totals.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So what are the differences between the files in the data/ip and
the data/moreip files?

Jim wrote:

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and data/moreip
directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are removed on a
periodic basis depending on the value set by the merchant in the
Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart screen. The default
value is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in the back office of the
store are accessed, a check is made to see if there are any shopping
carts older than the number of days specified and if so they are
removed. No report is generated that says how many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to do.
Who knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side
tracked and decided to come back later to finish the order or if they
just decided to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was picked as
the default value because most people probably wouldn't come back
after that long to finish an order. If you have a store getting lots
of traffic and a fair number of abandoned order, the number of
abandoned carts could use up considerable disk space so you may want
to set the time perion shorter than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the
number of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain in
the data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than the
value you set for the automatic removal. There is no tool available
that would allow you to get information out of the carts to determine
what was in the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned
shopping carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[Jim]

The initial files represent started shopping carts. These could be new
shopping carts created by a shopper or shopping carts created after an
order is finalize but kept to keep track of referrer information. Once
the shopper has finalized an order the file from the moreip directory is
combined with the file from the ip directory into a file in the ip
directory with the name format of iorder.-.new where - is the
order number. Once the merchant goes to the orders screen in the back
office to view the orders the iorder.-.new files are renamed to
iorder.-.done (or if there is a problem with the order
iorder.-.bad).

Note: the info in an earlier message about the files all starting with
SSM is only partially correct. There may be files that have an IP as
the file name if the shopping cart is created by a shopper with cookies off.

In reality there is no easy or good way to use these files to track
abandoned carts.

If you have ShopSite 7.1 pro you might be able to add some javascript
code to the shopping cart screen that would write the information you
need to track an order to your own database and then keep track of what
carts are finalize. 7.1 pro has javascript variable for most items in
the cart that you could use in your script. Help for the variables is
found here:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.1/en-US/ ... ables.html
but doing something like this would be totally outside of ShopSite control.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So do one of these represent completed orders, or started orders?

jim wrote:

The ip directory files contain the product information for the order
and the moreip directory files contain the shopper information and
order totals.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So what are the differences between the files in the data/ip and
the data/moreip files?

Jim wrote:

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and
data/moreip directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are
removed on a periodic basis depending on the value set by the
merchant in the Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart
screen. The default value is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in the
back office of the store are accessed, a check is made to see if
there are any shopping carts older than the number of days specified
and if so they are removed. No report is generated that says how
many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to do.
Who knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side
tracked and decided to come back later to finish the order or if
they just decided to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was picked
as the default value because most people probably wouldn't come back
after that long to finish an order. If you have a store getting
lots of traffic and a fair number of abandoned order, the number of
abandoned carts could use up considerable disk space so you may want
to set the time perion shorter than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the
number of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain in
the data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than the
value you set for the automatic removal. There is no tool available
that would allow you to get information out of the carts to
determine what was in the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned
shopping carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com

[powerstream]

To me, this seems like an important metric in e-commerce. Any way
you could impliment it in an upcomming release?

Jim wrote:

The initial files represent started shopping carts. These could be new
shopping carts created by a shopper or shopping carts created after an
order is finalize but kept to keep track of referrer information. Once
the shopper has finalized an order the file from the moreip directory is
combined with the file from the ip directory into a file in the ip
directory with the name format of iorder.-.new where - is the
order number. Once the merchant goes to the orders screen in the back
office to view the orders the iorder.-.new files are renamed to
iorder.-.done (or if there is a problem with the order
iorder.-.bad).

Note: the info in an earlier message about the files all starting with
SSM is only partially correct. There may be files that have an IP as
the file name if the shopping cart is created by a shopper with cookies
off.

In reality there is no easy or good way to use these files to track
abandoned carts.

If you have ShopSite 7.1 pro you might be able to add some javascript
code to the shopping cart screen that would write the information you
need to track an order to your own database and then keep track of what
carts are finalize. 7.1 pro has javascript variable for most items in
the cart that you could use in your script. Help for the variables is
found here:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.1/en-US/ ... ables.html
but doing something like this would be totally outside of ShopSite control.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So do one of these represent completed orders, or started orders?

jim wrote:

The ip directory files contain the product information for the order
and the moreip directory files contain the shopper information and
order totals.

Jim

powerstream wrote:

So what are the differences between the files in the data/ip and
the data/moreip files?

Jim wrote:

Vince,

Shopping cart files are created in the stores data/ip and
data/moreip directories. Shopping carts that are not completed are
removed on a periodic basis depending on the value set by the
merchant in the Commerce Setup > Order System > Shopping Cart
screen. The default value is 7 days. Everytime certain cgis in
the back office of the store are accessed, a check is made to see
if there are any shopping carts older than the number of days
specified and if so they are removed. No report is generated that
says how many were deleted.

Determining which ones were actually abandoned would be hard to
do. Who knows if the shopper got started on the order and was side
tracked and decided to come back later to finish the order or if
they just decided to abandon it and go elsewhere. 7 days was
picked as the default value because most people probably wouldn't
come back after that long to finish an order. If you have a store
getting lots of traffic and a fair number of abandoned order, the
number of abandoned carts could use up considerable disk space so
you may want to set the time perion shorter than 7 days.

The best method to determine how many shopping carts are being left
would probably be to create a cron job to create a file with the
number of shopping carts (file names start with SSM) that remain
in the data/ip directory of the store that are one day less than
the value you set for the automatic removal. There is no tool
available that would allow you to get information out of the carts
to determine what was in the cart or who had started the order.

Jim

Vince Salese wrote:

Does anyone know of a method to identify and track abandoned
shopping carts?

Vince
www.ahoycaptain.com