Customers not completing checkout

[stuartcindy]

Hi all,

I've been running amember for the last 4 months or so, using the paypal_r plugin.

I've noticed that a relatively high percentage of potential customers (50% yesterday ) who have diligently entered their details to sign up then do not (for whatever reason) go on to complete the transaction.

I see their details as 'pending' memberships but do not see any reference to their transaction in the error/debug log or access log, apart from one person who did get back to me saying there was a .htaccess error which I see in the debug log reported like this...

Cannot write to /home/weheat/public_html/amember/data/.htpasswd

I did do a payment test run on my own site and everything seems to be running ok at least when I try it out, and I do get memberships who sign up every day without problem too.

I'm not sure whether or not there is a technical problem or whether people just get cold feet when they hit the paypal page.

Does anyone have any tips for a new amember beginner?

Much appreciated,
Stuart

[skippybosco]

Did you chck the permissions on the Cannot write to /home/weheat/public_html/amember/data/.htpasswd file ?

[stuartcindy]

Yes. They are 644.
I would have thought though that if the permissions somewhere in my system were wrong that nobody would be able to sign up at all.

[alexander]

Do you use htpasswd plugin for protection?
if no you can just disable it in aMember CP ->Setup -> Plugins

[stuartcindy]

Would that affect protection on the my phpbb forum and the downloads contained within it?

[alexander]

No if you use new_rewrite protection method in order to protect your phpBB installation.

[karlchrisesteem]

I am using 2 checkout to process payments and although everything is working it appears I have a bailout of 85-90% and these are seen as pending!! This is really amazing and ı would at this moment be happy with 50%...

what to do?

[ameenmk]

I had a similar problem when I started with my site.
when people go from your site to the defauly amember checkout box they feel it might not be the same website so they bail out.

Once i got the amember template customized with my banner and colors, pendings went down to almost zero.

I still have a large percentage of people who go to the check out page and do not enter their info and check out, but as for the people who become pending, that is no longer a problem.

[davidm1]

I still have a large percentage of people who go to the check out page and do not enter their info and check out, but as for the people who become pending, that is no longer a problem.

You might want to try my "pending plugin" for this. This will allow you to email people who dont complete the signup on a set schedule, saving those lost buyers.

Once i got the amember template customized with my banner and colors, pendings went down to almost zero.

Whats the % increase you got?

It's crazy how many sites dont bother to do this, they are leaving massive amounts of money on the table. Any designers looking to make some quick money could find these sites and sell them on the templating!

David

[karlchrisesteem]

ameenmk - who does your customizing for you?

Did you do it yourself?

Any tips how I can customize my default page?

[ameenmk]

David is the one who did the customization. Pretty cheap too. He took my banner and background from the main site and applied it to the amember pages.

I am sure there is more you can do to get people to convert. shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue for all websites. The more visitor trust you and your site the more they will sign up. But customizing amember pages help me a lot.

The % before customization was something like 10% not following through. That number has dropped to less than 1% now.

free fell to check out my site and see how it looks.

ameen

[stuartcindy]

When I first posted this thread I was having problems getting customers to convert...
I have now almost eliminated pending accounts and sales are consistently up!

It basically just entailed a bit of tidying up to plug all the little 'customer doubt' gaps

I did this by addressing the following...

- Themed the amember page to match my website

- Added a credit card payment processor as an alternative to paypal

- made sure that my business name which is part of my paypal email address is clearly shown in the header bar of my website (like many sites my website name is different from my paypal business email address)

- Made sure the offer text in my site was repeated and reinforced in my product description that shows on the signup page (I offer 1 year memberships and I think that people were missing the duration on my website and then getting surprised when they hit the signup page)

- Added a 3 year membership option (which is cheaper per year that yearly)

Puzzle solved! Thanks everyone