There are many reasons why a customer may abandon browsing without adding to their cart including: Just looking for now The price is too high Price-checking against a competitor A distraction called the customer away from their device Another product is better suited (either one of yours or a competitor’s) As you know, this expression of customer interest in an item is a vital piece of data that opens the door to future sales opportunities.

One the main buzzwords in the retail world at the moment is “personalisation”; however, as it seems to me with a lot of these terms, I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot of confusion about what this actually means in real life. Part of the problem is that a lot of companies say they do personalisation, but what they actually offer is something quite limited. For example, whenever an email provider says that they offer personalisation, but really only let you address your emails to “Joe” or “Mary” based on some name field in a database - I’m talking about {$FIRST_NAME} tags - in my opinion they’re being a little misleading.

Challenge We don’t need to tell you that the number of possible ways for a retailer to connect with their customers has mushroomed into a broader array of channels and devices than has ever been seen before. What’s more, in the case of retailers with both a physical store and an online presence, an additional challenge is to coordinate both of these interaction sets in a way that’s seamless for the customer but also maximises revenue.