3 Shopping Cart Retrieval Tips to Pick Up Lost Sales & Stop Cart Abandonment
The fight to recover abandoned shopping carts is real, find out how you can implement shopping cart retrieval to pick up lost sales.
3 Tips To Combat Abandoned Shopping Carts
It’s become a common phenomenon with online shopping — shoppers will find a bunch of items they like, add it to their cart, and then completely abandon them.
Ecommerce company, Barilliance, found that the global average rate for shopping cart abandonment in 2016 was a massive 77 percent.
Whether it’s because of unforeseen shipping costs, complicated payment pages, a requirement to login or increased competition, this trend can be irritating for businesses and makes it vital for marketers to make changes in their websites purchasing process.
Before we get to these 3 tips that will help combat abandonment and begin your effective shopping cart retrieval, let’s take a look at the reasons why shoppers are leaving.
These Stats Show the Top Reasons for Online Shopping Cart Abandonment
Outside of the 58.6% of people who abandon cart because they simply aren’t ready to buy, here is the Baymard Institute’s breakdown of alternative reasons for customers who abandon shopping carts.
- 61%: Extra costs (shipping, taxes, fees) were too high
- 35%: Didn’t want to create an account
- 27%: The checkout process was too long or complicated
- 24%: Couldn’t see or calculate total order cost up-front
- 22%: Reported the website had errors or crashed.
- 18% Didn’t trust the site with their credit card information
- 16%: Delivery timeline was much too slow
- 10%: Didn’t believe the returns policy to be fair or satisfactory
- 8%: Didn’t see their preferred method of payment
- 5%: Their credit card was declined
1. More Detailed Product Pages and Ecommerce Optimization
A common issue with online shopping is that consumers aren’t able to see the product in person before making a purchase, leading to fears that it won’t be up to standard. Providing comprehensive information on your product page is vital to combating abandoned shopping carts and gaining your consumers’ trust so they feel comfortable to purchase online.
Watches.com does a fantastic job of instilling buyer confidence by providing amazing photos, even better, they provide amazing user photos! They provide superb detailed information about the product and make it easy to check out. Lastly, they offer multiple incentives to help entice the customer to make the purchase.
There is direct correlation between the quality of product information, conversion rates and shopping cart abandonment. If you want to start retrieving some of these shoppers, try including as many facts and specifications about the product, including materials, place of manufacturing, look and feel. While you may be deterred by the fact that managing a lot of content can be difficult, certain ecommerce platforms allow you to leverage keyword optimization for product pages and update your product information on vendors’ websites simultaneously.
2. Well-Placed and Smart Promotions
The online space is filled with many competitors, so what makes you stand out the most to your audience? Promotions often grab people’s attention and encourage them to complete a purchase. However, with many online retailers offering deals, it’s important to be smart about how these promotions are presented to gain maximum exposure. If you don’t sell your product directly, work with vendors that host promos the way you like. You may not have direct say over pricing but you might have some pull.
Your homepage is often the first thing customers see, so your offer should always be shown on the home page. Make sure to consider formatting so that you cater to skimmers. Don’t overpopulate the page as this can bore and confuse viewers. Try a hover ad so that you know that the promotion will be seen. When it comes to abandonment issues, instilling urgency can also be a great way to encourage customers to make the purchase so maybe put a time limit on the promotion as a whole, as well as on how long customers have to purchase their cart in order to receive the deal.
3. Follow Up With Customers
According to a report by Business Insider Intelligence, three-fourths of shoppers who abandon their shopping carts say they plan on returning to make a purchase. As marketers, how can we maximize on this? Building a relationship with consumers by following up is a great way to remind them of what they picked, offer them new promotions to initiate a sense of care and trust. Try having a system in place that reaches out to customers via email a few days after they’ve abandoned a cart. Maybe they didn’t make the purchase simply because they were waiting to get paid or they didn’t enough time, or their device ran out of battery. By following up with your consumers, you refocus their attention and maximize on potential shopping carts.
BigCommerce researched abandoned cart emails and found that the average revenue per email is $5.64, compared to only $0.02 for promotional emails, and $0.18 per welcome email you send.
Using Email for Shopping Cart Retrieval
Abandoned cart emails are a series of reminder emails sent to customers who have initiated your checkout flow, provided an email address, and failed to make a purchase.
The emails will trigger based on rules you set up, and will feature the content left in their cart. Fortunately, most eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce and Shopify have abandoned cart email systems built in. Whew!
Calculate Revenue Generated by Shopping Cart Retrieval
If you were to start converting visitors who’s jumped ship, what would that mean to your business? You can actually calculate that using BigCommerces’ handy Abandoned Cart Calculator:
With tons of competition and other contributing factors, consumers abandoning shopping carts online has become a common issue for many ecommerce retailers. Try implementing a few of these tips to get better conversion results on your site and on your vendors’ sites
