Combat Cart Abandonment
Do you have a clear idea of how big your online store is, where you want to expand, and what your revenue goal should be from day to day, but still feel like your earnings ought to be higher? When it comes to eCommerce, one of the biggest reasons for losing a sale is due to shoppers leaving your store without completing their purchases. This article covers three recovery tips that will help you combat cart abandonment!
“Optimizely describes shopping cart abandonment as a situation when a potential customer starts a check out process for an online order but drops out of the process before completing the purchase.”
Why Do Shoppers Abandon Their Carts?
The most common reasons for abandonment are actually pretty simple and it’ll come as no surprise: people usually want to compare prices to see all their options. Some of them are just browsing, either because they’re not ready to make a purchase or they’re looking a product over online before they decide to buy it in-store. Others may have an issue with a lack of payment & shipping options. And of course, some might just be impatient with the long buying process, obligatory registration, or other technical difficulties that accompany some estores. When it comes to your own business, creating an exit intent popup or at least a survey might help you find out more and give you a clearer idea of where you’re losing your customer’s interest.
Don’t Get Scared By Average Abandonment Rates
We all have to come face to face with the sad truth; cart abandonment causes online retailers a great deal of pain, but to a certain degree it’s also unavoidable. According to Baymard, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69% (and some sources report it to be much higher, upwards of 80%). This means between 6 and 8 out of every 10 potential shoppers who add a product to their cart will leave your store without buying it. Which seems crazy! Can you imagine how much your sales would increase if you were able to capture this demographic instead of losing them?
How to Combat Cart Abandonment
There’s not much you can do when it comes to window shoppers, but even when instore shoppers have abandoned a cart that doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of the story. There are ways to get those customers back into your store. Let’s take a look at these 3 strategies for recovering lost sales.
1. PREVENTION over anything else
The first tip probably seems obvious — don’t let people leave. But how do prevent this from happening? If you take a look at all the reasons why shoppers abandon their carts listed above, the answer is self-evident. Always try to put yourself in the shoes of your clients, and strive to make everything as easy and friendly as possible, and this will go a long way toward encouraging them to make a purchase. If you show them you care, they’ll be more willing to buy.
Paying attention to the right data, you’ll also find weak spots and gaps in the buying process in your store, areas that a report by Slice Intelligence calls ‘pain points’.
- Reduce your average order processing time to a minimum. Delegate more energy and work capacity in order to speed up the dispatching of your orders whenever possible.
- Simplify the checkout process. Find out what type of shipping and payment methods your customers use the most, focus on relevant platforms, and offer custom-tailored deals based on their preferences. Free shipping & next day delivery is a must these days, and should take priority over any other shipping method.
- If possible, integrate live chat options into your website, and provide top-notch customer support. Use relevant & timely on-site messaging (offer help / save cart details and remind customers later etc.).
- Reassure your customers with a clear and convenient product return policies and increase trust by placing payment security badges on your site.
One useful app for keeping track of all these different aspects is MonkeyData which can help you streamline your prevention tactics by tracking the most important numbers easily, and save you a lot of time which can be devoted to other tasks.
2. Tempt shoppers back with an EMAIL / SMS
When it comes to (re)marketing, emailing is essential. A well-timed cart abandonment email can persuade people to come back and complete their transaction. Timing is important factor, and emails should be sent while the potential purchase is still in the customer’s mind, ideally within 1–2 hours after leaving your site.
If you pay close attention to eCommerce trends, then you also know personalization is the key here. Use this knowledge when thinking up subject lines and don’t hesitate to include a customer’s name or their company in the email. Do some A/B testing to find out what works best. The content should be personally tailored and at least a little bit urgent (time / stock limited offer will help), plus it should contain a summary of cart contents with visuals which is a good way to refresh the products in their minds. And of course, including a clear call-to-action button(s) is critical. If possible, capitalizing on forms of social proof can also spice up an email, with everything from customers reviews to recommendations.
Unfortunately, it is very hard to create a successful and standardized high-performing cart abandonment email. A lot of creativity is involved in getting email addresses from your potential customers voluntarily. You’ll be lucky if 10% of those who leave a website without completing a transaction leave their addresses — meaning you miss out on a huge base of potential hot leads you have no way of directly contacting.
3. Smart Ad RETARGETING
You can’t email them but it’s still possible to retarget these leads by running highly personalized adverts. To do this, you can use services such as AdRoll, Google AdWords Remarketing, ReTargeter or Facebook Ads to display specific ads to that shopper when they visit other sites. These ads typically offer some kind of incentive so you should be willing to offer a little something extra if the person returns to complete the transaction. The most common incentives include free shipping, a complimentary gift or a discount.
The retargeting ads can be tailored to your specifications, depending on the customer and the product. For instance, if someone exits your store and abandons a Rose Gold Huawei P9 Lite in a cart, you can have retargeting ads of that same smartphone show up when the shopper is on another website (as long as it accepts the ads).
With 1.32 billion daily active (mostly mobile) users, Facebook offers a very promising audience for your (re)marketing efforts. It’s not easy to gain insight into Facebook Advertising, and taking that first step can be scary, so here’s your guide. But even though Facebook continues to reign in popularity over other social media channels, the competition is mounting — don’t forget about Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms as well.
It’s also a sound idea to try and stop shoppers from leaving your website through an exit intent strategy. This entails doing whatever you can to prevent it from happening in the first place, but also when it does happen reacting soon enough. And don’t worry, even if customers don’t return to your store, there’s an important lesson you can later benefit from — namely, discovering those gaps in your business model that prompted shoppers to abandon their carts. Relying on surveys or data analytics can help you to improve your performance and reduce future abandonment rates.
