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Retry Analysis and Order Recovery

Visualizing and Understanding Retries and Recoveries

Understanding Retries and Recoveries

In the payment process, an order may experience one or more failed transactions before ultimately succeeding. When an initial payment attempt fails, retries can happen for many reasons, including but not limited to:

  1. Customers attempting to pay again using the same or a different payment method
  2. Automated dunning systems or recovery systems that retry failed payments for subscription or recurring transaction model businesses

This process of making multiple payment attempts is known as "retrying." When a transaction succeeds after one or more failed attempts, it's referred to as a "recovery."

Key Concepts

  • Attempt 1: The first transaction for an order
  • Retries: Any subsequent transactions for the same order
  • Recovery: A successful transaction that occurs after one or more failed attempts

Retry Analysis

Retry analysis provides merchants with an aggregate view of order success rates across multiple attempts. This analysis helps in understanding the effectiveness of retry strategies and the potential for recovering seemingly lost sales.

What Retry Analysis Shows

  1. Success rate at first attempt (Attempt 1)
  2. Recovery rates for each subsequent retry (Retry 1, Retry 2, etc.)

Similar to authorization rates, these metrics can also be measured through count (number of orders) or volume (sum of order values successful at each attempt/retry).

Example Scenario

Consider an order with the following transaction history:

  1. Transaction 1 (Attempt 1): Failed
  2. Transaction 2 (Retry 1): Failed
  3. Transaction 3 (Retry 2): Failed
  4. Transaction 4 (Retry 3): Failed
  5. Transaction 5 (Retry 4): Successful

In this scenario, the order was recovered on the 4th retry (5th transaction overall).

Benefits of Retry Analysis

  1. Optimize Retry Strategies: Determine the most effective number of retry attempts
  2. Improve Cash Flow: Understand the value recovered through retries
  3. Enhance Customer Experience: Minimize payment friction by identifying and addressing common failure points
  4. Increase Overall Authorization Rates: By recovering potentially lost sales through effective retries

By leveraging retry analysis, merchants can make data-driven decisions to improve their payment processes, recover more sales, and ultimately enhance their bottom line.

Failed Order Flow Analysis

To provide a more detailed view of the retry process and its outcomes, we offer a Sankey chart representation. This visualization helps you understand the flow of orders through the retry cycle, including changes in payment methods and abandoned orders.

Understanding the Chart

The Sankey chart helps you visualize the following:

  1. Initial payment attempts that can be broken down by various parameters including payment method, card type, and card scheme
  2. The flow of failed orders into retries, including what payment method, card type, or card scheme was used for a subsequent transaction
  3. Changes in payment methods during retries
  4. Success rates of retries with different payment methods
  5. Orders that were abandoned after a failed attempt

Using the Chart

  1. The Failed Order Flow Analysis is a quick visualization tool to understand your customer checkout experience and more specifically identify if there are any specific patterns to why customers drop off after a failed attempt.
  2. If you notice that there aren't any retries, reach out to our team. It could be because of the way you have integrated with your payment provider that is showing each retry as an independent transaction, or it could also be because your customers aren't retrying at all.

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