The name of the game in eCommerce is to generate more revenue – so we geek out with all kinds of analysis on how to do that better for you. We continually tweak our checkout processes and systems to eliminate friction with the goal of reducing cart abandonment and improving your yield.

Credit card companies and transaction processors have meanwhile tightened transaction standards, leading to a recent decrease in transactions, and not just fraudulent ones. Following the data, we have confirmed this increase in failed transactions – so it stood to reason we should try to reduce the number of users who wanted to purchase but could not. (duh!) These failed transactions are very low-hanging fruit.

Here are a few examples of why a transaction fails:

• Fraud alerts that may be a false positive
• The user exceeded their credit card limit and the transaction was rejected
• The user entered their card incorrectly (transposed numbers, expiration date, CCV)
• User made too many purchases in too short a time and tripped a fraud concern by the payment processor. This is occasionally an example of fraud.

What does this information tell you?

The primary goal is to rescue a failed transaction.

This person didn't abandon their cart, and was committed enough to enter a card number: They just couldn't complete the transaction. Why not reach out and try to help them?

Alternatively, if you see a rise in the number of seemingly good orders being failed due to fraud, you may need to adjust your fraud protection levels with your payment processor.
 

Want to learn more?

ePublishing has released an update that is now available in your tools which allow you to peer into your failed transactions so that you may take action.

The Knowledge Base articles on the order information now saved in the Order Manager are here:

• http://help.epublishing.com/m/32641/l/520041-how-do-i-find-order-transactions-that-failed
• http://help.epublishing.com/m/32641/l/520035-can-i-be-notified-if-an-order-transaction-fails-how
• http://help.epublishing.com/m/32641/l/520565-what-do-i-do-with-an-order-transaction-failure-notification

Do you have Automatic Renewal Billing?

A special note for clients who have Automatic Renewal Billing: we will continue to send the email they have been receiving when a problem arises. But we will now be saving those orders in our system as rejected - enabling you to reach out directly.

Hopefully this creates an opportunity for you to deliver your customers an outstanding service experience while increasing your revenue!