Did you ever calculate the ratio of customers leaving your carts? Do you know that more than 80% of your carts are being abandoned by your customers?
As e-Commerce is advancing, more and more people are opting for online shopping fashion. If you have an online store, you must work on your abandoned cart strategy before you lose out on any more potential customers.
This guide will focus on your abandoned cart responses and teach you how to cater to the problem. We will cover together what are abandoned carts? How to mature your abandoned cart strategy to win back your potential customers?
So, let’s crush this.
What Are Abandoned Carts?
The problem occurs when a customer adds an item to his checkout list but fails to proceed with the sale.
For example, you sell clothes online. A customer finds a shirt that compliments his office environment. He selects it, chooses the size, but for some reason finds it hard to complete the purchase.
Instead of filling out the card details before the checkout, he simply leaves the cart and website altogether. Since the sale was incomplete, you can now call it an abandoned cart.
Sounds familiar?
Don’t Worry; this is a common phenomenon. And this is why we are here to fix your abandoned cart strategy
Calling Abandoned Carts: The Reasons
There can be numerous causes to clienteles abandoning their carts. A few of the primary reasons can be seen below:
- The cost of delivery was higher than anticipated.
- Just comparing prices.
- Decided didn’t want the product.
- The item was out of stock.
- The estimated delivery time was too long.
- The item was not going to be delivered in time.
- The preferred payment method was not offered.
- Decided to complete the purchase on another site.
As per the global online shopping cart abandonment survey, the biggest reason recorded was “the cost of delivery turned out to be higher than anticipated.”
Abandoned Cart Strategies
Think about the number of efforts you had put in to get a shopper to visit your site. Now put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think how excited they must have been to put that item into their cart. But still, if they abandoned that cart, then you need to contemplate your abandoned cart strategy.
Are you think what can you do? Did we leave you wondering how to cater to cart abandonment? The solution can be found here.
Provide free shipping – as per Statista, the shipment cost is one of the common reasons for cart abandonment. You can combat the problem by offering one of the following free shipping experiments to calculate the results. You can either offer:
- Nationwide/worldwide
- At a minimum order value
- For the first time/returning customers
- For a limited time-frame
- Selected products/categories
- For cart abandoners in remarketing emails
Offer express shipping – some of your shoppers shop on an urgent basis, hence they expect a quick delivery. If it cannot be delivered on time, it is of no use otherwise. As a result, offer them quick shipping. Not everybody is doing that.
You can offer express shipping and/or next day delivery.
Offer guest checkout – some of your sites offer a new user to create an account, it annoys them since it extends their checkout process. Give them a choice of needing not to create a new account by offering a guest checkout process.
The research was led by the Baymard Institute that deducted a checkout flow should have 5.08 steps only.
If you want to stand out in the competition, take this as a clear and effective example. See below how Nordstorm worked on its abandoned cart strategy by offering a great check out process.
Provide a live chat option – Live chat can effectively prevent cart abandonment. Your shoppers may face technicalities about (the product, shipping, returns, etc.) or maybe a little hesitant about their shopping decision. Having a live chat option can help you assist them on time, rather than to give them an option to abandon the site.
Insert Testimonials – Why don’t you display positive feedbacks from your previous clients on your websites? It works as social proof. You can shoot the following info:
- Customer Reviews
- Video Testimonials
- Customer Ratings
- Customers’ photos with the product
Define a return policy – The third primary reason for cart abandonment is you not giving the customer ample time to return the product. Meaning, you giving a short time to return it.
But, if shoppers get an option to return the product for free and have a long period to return it, the consequences of not wanting the product are reduced.
Offer a variety of payment methods – What is the point of offering a worldwide delivery if you cannot let your customers pay from their preferred payment method?
So use this option as an abandoned cart strategy, and provide them various payment methods to avoid cart abandonment.
Abandoned Cart Responses
There’s another abandoned cart strategy that is quite well-known these days. It is appropriate and you can implement it to combat this phenomenon. By doing so, you can recover any previous losses and start generating revenue.
The technique is called the ‘abandoned cart email strategy.’
What is the abandoned carts email strategy?
This strategy is believed to be the backbone of e-Commerce. Online businesses are using it to send a follow-up email to anyone who adds an item but leaves the cart without purchasing it.
It sends a reminder to the customer of that item that was left in the cart; sort of a way to force them to complete the purchase. Here are some ideas that you can use like other e-Commerce providers are using to apply this technique in their businesses:
- Highlight the product in the email that they abandoned.
- Offer a discount coupon.
- Show creativity in the e-mail content
What Are You Waiting for, Christmas?
We have included some amazing ideas and suggestions for you to work on your abandoned cart strategy. We have always thought of your advantage and this is why we recommend you to apply any of the above strategies, especially the abandoned cart email one.
You will become a fan of it.
Any one of you who does not have an online store but ended up reading this talk? Well, you can own a store too. Simply pick up an idea and reach out to us here to have a store build in just a few days.
Believe it or not, it’s the era of online shopping.
