Recovering Abandoned eCommerce Carts
Following the first part of this two part series about online shopping cart abandonment, the eCommerce Newsletter brings you Recovering Abandoned Carts. We went over ways eCommerce shop owners can try to prevent abandoned carts, but what happens when shoppers have already left? What can we do to bring these shoppers back?
Why do shoppers abandon carts?
To recap, there are a few reasons why online shoppers may leave their carts:
- Unexpected shipping costs and fees
- No guest checkout option
- Complicated checkout process
- Limited payment options
- Poor website experience
- Lack of mobile optimization
How can I recover abandoned carts?
- Retargeting ads
This has probably happened to you before as a shopper. You add some items to your cart and proceed to exit the page. Later that day you’re scrolling through social media and you see the exact items you added appear as targeted ads on your feed. That’s the shop reminding you of your abandoned items! This is very common to see on Facebook.
Cookies on your shop’s page can hold information on the types of items your shopper looks at and what they’ve clicked on. This information can be used with the help of an ad network like Google Ads or Facebook to remind your customer to complete checkout!
2. Recovery emails
Emails are an incredibly powerful way to recover abandoned carts. Strategically sending emails to remind people of the items they’ve left behind is one of the best ways to finish a sale. Best practices for abandonment emails are:
- Send one within a few hours to make sure there wasn’t a technical issue with the website or checkout process that made them leave their cart and to just remind them of the items left behind.
- Send a second email to remind them of the items they’ve left and potentially include a discount (more on this later).
- Send a third email within 48 hours to remind them of a discount and incentivize them to complete checkout and use a scarcity persuasion technique to push them to complete checkout. (e.g. Your cart is expiring soon!)
3. Push notifications
You can create a push notification option on your website, where if a customer allows notifications, you can use these to re-market and remind them of abandoned items. This follows the same concept as recovery emails, where you can use personalized messages to remind shoppers of their carts. You can even utilize apps to help like ones offered by Shopify.
4. Recovery promo
We briefly covered this under recovery emails, but offering a recovery discount can be just the push a shopper needs to go complete their purchase. Coupon codes are commonly offered through recovery emails or notifications, but can also be utilized with target ads. Pro-tip: use the personalization technique to make the shopper feel that this coupon code is just for them (e.g. “Just for you!”). Little tips like this along with scarcity are subtle, but can be powerful marketing tools
Cart abandonment is inevitable to some degree. There will always be shoppers that add to their carts and never make it to checkout. But effectively using prevention and recovery tips will help you optimize your eCommerce shop and successfully reduce cart abandonment overall. To look at the glass half full, cart recovery strategies gives your shop a second chance with customers, giving them a new opportunity to take another look at your shop and hopefully grow your customer base!
