Cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating things an online retailer faces. You’ve worked so hard to get a customer to “add to cart” and then they just … disappear.
On average, a staggering 79% of online shoppers will abandon their cart without ever making a purchase. Users cite fear over privacy in giving personal information and poor user experience as some of the most common reasons that they don’t complete purchases.
People typically leave their online shopping carts due to a lack of trust and overly complicated steps in the checkout process. The amount of money lost from terminated transactions amounts to billions of dollars of lost revenue across all industries.
However, the good news is that a handful of tried-and-true methods help recover lost customers. Below, we’ll cover some great solutions to reduce cart abandonment and share our favorite tools to help you gain back those long-lost customers.
Solutions for cart abandonment
By enacting these solutions post-cart abandonment, companies have been able to earn back multiple streams of business.
- Email remarketing: Sometimes users abandon a cart with every intention to return. Other times, a technical error occurs and a user is forced off the site. Email is a great way to ping users and reminds them to complete their transactions. However, it’s important to send out an email reminder within 24 hours of the abandoned purchase, and follow up 2-3 days after that. Another best practice is to personalize the email with specific details about what’s in the cart. In essence, don’t just send a generalized marketing email to keep the company top of mind. Instead, speak specifically to the abandoned cart and entice users back with something like a discount offer, free shipping, or a campaign to induce a sense of urgency such as the product supply running low.
- Pop-ups that measure exit-intent: A highly useful tool to gain back lost customers is to catch them at the moment right before they exit your eCommerce site. By installing software that measures when a user is about to exit out of the site, you can install a pop-up that encourages them to stay. One of the most effective ways to do this is to offer a discount on the product(s) they were just looking at or offering a percentage discount on the entire purchase. With this added monetary benefit, users may decide to make the purchase at that moment, especially if the discount is only good for a limited amount of time. Another idea for exit pop-ups can be to invite users to save their shopping cart by gathering an email address. This has the added benefit of giving you a place to send a remarketing email.
- Retargeting ads: Whether through Facebook, Google Ads, or Bing, remarketing is a great way to follow users who have abandoned an eCommerce page to the sites they frequent—search engines and social media sites. Remarketing works by featuring the product itself or the company page in an ad with a specific call to action to encourage users to return and complete their purchase. Facebook offers more visual space than Google Ads or Bing so it is an effective medium for visually compelling ads.
- SMS remarketing: We live in a digitally saturated world. Text messages have an immediacy to them as users often read texts within minutes of them coming in. SMS remarketing is a great way to take advantage of this immediacy while potential customers may still be thinking of your product. The key is to capture phone numbers, either as an exit pop-up or through a guest checkout or member login process.
- Live chat: Sometimes, a user has a simple question that keeps them from completing a purchase. Other times, they encounter technical difficulties and need live support. Chat is a great way to accommodate customers in real-time without losing them to lengthy customer service calls.
Other best practices for minimizing cart abandonment
- Social proof/trust badges: To create a sense of trust and social proof with your company, feature testimonials from other buyers. You can also use well-recognized logos like Norton Secured, McAfee Secure, or VeriSign Secured as trust badges to give an added layer of legitimacy to your eCommerce site. You can also offer transparent information about returns so that people feel like they aren’t stuck with a product they don’t like.
- Transparent checkout: By making the checkout process clear from the get-go, you lessen the chance that a user will get cold feet at the last minute. Two simple ways to do this include being upfront about shipping costs (this is one of the biggest last-minute detractors from making an online purchase) and letting users know how long the checkout process will take by offering a progress indicator. Progress indicators show how many pages or steps are involved in the checkout process and tell the user exactly where they are in the process. Also, always show a user where they can review the order so they don’t fear buying something they didn’t intend to buy. Pro tip: keep the checkout process under five steps and make sure a user is completely clear where to click the checkout button.
- Guest checkout/login: One of the main detractors for would-be customers is having to give personal information or spend valuable time setting up a new account. To avoid this, many sites offer guest checkout. This allows a user to purchase without having to offer up their valuable personal information like email and phone number. It also helps alleviate any potential fears of getting bombarded with future communications from your company. Another beneficial tool is to allow users to sign in using Google or Facebook. With one button, you can gather their details without them having to sign up for a personal account.
Tools for cart abandonment
- Rejoiner:
- Best for: email remarketing strategy
- Rejoiner is a popular solution for building out a company’s email remarketing strategy. With specialists on hand to help with execution strategy, it’s a level above other tools that simply allow you to schedule emails but put all the work in your hands. The extra help comes at a cost, starting at about $95/month.
- AdRoll:
- Best for: email remarketing, retargeting ads
- AdRoll utilizes a suite of solutions, often in conjunction, to bring users back. They employ sophisticated email remarketing and retargeting ads to bring attention back to the company. Their pricing model depends on a specified ad spend and the projected revenue generated from the ecommerce campaign.
- Crazy Egg:
- Best for: Site optimization and user experience
- Crazy egg enables heat maps to show you exactly how and where users are using your eCommerce site. Noticing that your call to action button doesn’t get clicked? Maybe it’s time for optimization. An eCommerce site’s functionality and user interface design are as important as its products and Crazy Egg helps you make sure users are getting exactly where they need to on your site.
- Olark:
- Best for: Live chat
- Olark is a live chat app that talks to customers and website users in real-time, eliminating time spent on customer service emails or calls. There’s also a feature to automate chatbots at strategic points in the buyer’s journey. It’s currently used by over 12,000 businesses worldwide. In addition to answering questions in real-time, Olark can also be used to gather feedback about a product or service. It has a free version and paid pricing starts at $19/month.
- OptInMonster
- Best for: pop ups and exit intent surveys
- OptinMonster offers comprehensive solutions to measure exit intent behavior and recapture users with pop-ups. By offering customizable templates, users can monitor common reasons for exiting a site, while being able to change their exit offers. Pricing starts at $9/month.
- Shop App:
- Best for: ease of checkout
- Shop app is a tool that enables the use of one account to show information about purchases from many companies. It comes built-in with Shopify. There isn’t a comparable tool in Magento. Companies can opt to use the app for the integration of your information and purchases across the web. It’s known for its ease of use for users who don’t want to create an account. For instance, if ordering at a restaurant, all you have to do is offer your phone number and your profile will come up with all your information pre-populated. You can also login via Facebook or Google.
- Trigger:
- Best for: boosting eCommerce conversions
- Trigger is a Magento extension that allows eCommerce retailers to track real-time insights on user activity. From product sales and reviews to geo-targeted messaging that taps into the all-too-common fear of missing out – or FOMO – Trigger also allows you to customize messaging to fit your brand tone.
Find a Partner You Can Trust
If all of this information feels like a lot, you aren’t alone. Hiring a strategic eCommerce partner can help you work through any and every cart abandonment solution and tool you need to employ for your eCommerce needs.
At Pineapple Development, we’ll help you reduce cart and checkout abandonment, while also optimizing your eCommerce experience.
Contact us to find out how we can help you pick the right tools and strategies to recover those customers who got away.