Cloud.IQ sends shopping trolley to space to emphasize online 'cart abandonment' issue to retailers
Marketing agency cloud.IQ sent - and recovered - a shopping cart from space to highlight the growing problem of online ‘cart abandonment’ which costs UK retailers £1bn a year.
There are 100m pieces of space junk orbiting the planet
It worked with HabeExperiments to launch a minature shopping cart 20 miles to the edge of space using a helium balloon (see video below).
Once the balloon reached maximum altitude it burst and returned to earth with a parachute. The shopping trolley and parachute landed in a field and, using GPS trackers attached to the payload, was successfully recovered.
The stunt was carried out to emphaize the missed opportunity retailers are facing due to the amount of people who abandon their purchases before checkout.
The British spend more on the web than any other nation - a whopping £44bn in 2013 - according to Kantar research referenced by the cart-recovery agency. However, seven out of ten shoppers who visit a site abandon their purchase before the checkout.
Cloud.IQ has developed a set of tools designed to boost online sales, including ‘exitCapture’, a tool that tracks visitors' activity on a site and then anticipates when they’re about to leave.
Just before they exit, they’re offered exclusive content or offers via site overlays that are triggered based on a user’s behaviour, to prevent them from leaving.
This technique consistently captures 300 per cent more email opt-ins and converts 10 per cent more sales, according to the cloud.IQ.
James Critchley, founder and CEO of cloud.IQ, said: “We had great fun launching and recovering the first ever shopping cart in space, along with our intrepid explorer ‘Dotty’.
“But we’re making a serious point: with so much competition for consumers online, Britain’s retailers need to do more to convert web window shoppers into paying customers.”
Cloud.IQ, which launched two years ago, works with customers including Dr Martens, Lyle and Scott and Wowcher.