If you’ve ever looked at your abandoned checkouts under ‘Orders’ in your Shopify store you might be overwhelmed by your high cart abandonment. According to Baymard, 69.23% is the cart abandonment rate for the average online store. Despite the high number, it is possible to recover abandoned carts effectively and affordably. 85.65% of cart abandonments occur on mobile phones, so mobile optimization and testing is essential for online store owners. In this article you’ll learn why you should recover abandoned carts, effective cart abandonment recovery tactics, abandoned cart apps, and more.

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What Is an Abandoned Cart?

An abandoned cart occurs when a customer adds an item to their cart and doesn’t follow through with a purchase. For example, a customer may have intended to purchase but a high shipping cost may have stopped them from following through. Thus, resulting in cart abandonment.

Cart Abandonment Reasons

There are numerous reasons why a customer might add an item to their cart without buying. Maybe they’re curious and are checking the total price with shipping and taxes. Or they’ve added the item to their cart with the intention of purchasing, but became distracted and never got around to making the purchase. They also could’ve added an item to their cart with the hope of receiving an abandoned cart email offer with a discount, so they can save money. Despite the shopping cart abandonment, they liked the product enough to add it to their cart in the first place.

Why You Should Recover Abandoned Carts?

abandoned carts

There are numerous benefits to recovering abandoned carts. First, it helps increase sales. By recovering your abandoned carts, you can boost your store’s revenue and profit by following up with a customer, and encouraging them to complete their purchase. Getting a customer into your sales funnel is cheaper than trying to find a new customer to market to. Retargeting ads tend to be affordable, and cart abandonment emails are another cost-effective solution to boost your sales.

Second, when you recover abandoned carts you become better able to determine the cause of lower sales. If a product discount is effective at recovering abandoned carts your product pricing might be too high for the average consumer. If customers from the same country keep abandoning their cart then your shipping costs may be too high. You may need to offer a free shipping threshold to make it more affordable for your international customers. By working to recover abandoned carts, you become a better store owner, as you start realizing areas you can improve your business. It allows you to better optimize your store for conversions so you can increase sales.

Keep in mind that the customer showed interest in the product, even if it resulted in cart abandonment. If a customer abandoned their cart but were planning to buy your product, they’ll be happy to complete their purchase. A mistake that store owners make is assuming customers made the decision to not buy their product. Even offering a small discount to recover abandoned carts can prove to be profitable for your store.

How to Recover Abandoned Carts

abandoned carts

1. Push Notifications

Sometimes when you visit a website, a button pops up asking if you’d like to subscribe to push notifications. If a customer clicks ‘allow’ then you can remarket to them through push notifications. You can use a push notification app found on the Shopify App Store. You can improve your abandoned cart recovery rate by sending personalized push notifications to customers who’ve abandoned cart. You can even offer special discounts to those customers to encourage them to recover any cart abandonment. You’re free to set reminders a few minutes after shopping cart abandonment though ideally reminders should be sent within the first 24 hours.

2. Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads can help boost your abandoned cart recovery by presenting customers with the exact product(s) that they’ve abandoned. You’ll need to add a Facebook pixel or Google RSLA on your store so that you present each individual customer the exact item they’ve abandoned. Retargeting ads are effective at recovering abandoned carts, and you don’t need any advanced marketing skills for them to work well.

3. Email

Email is popularly used to improve your cart abandonment rate. However, its effectiveness can be lower than push notifications and retargeting ads as people are inundated with emails every day. Plus,  most emails aren’t sent to the customer’s main inbox. To create an effective abandoned cart email focus on creating an amazing subject line. You should test several different subject lines as this will encourage the most opens possible, and encourage customers to purchase your product. To improve the effectiveness of your abandoned cart email, you’ll need to devote time to testing different copy, offers and layouts to boost your abandoned cart recovery rate.

Abandoned Cart Apps

abandoned carts

1. Consistent Cart

The Consistent Cart abandoned cart app helps your customers save items in their cart when they switch devices to help lower abandoned carts. It also automatically sends abandoned cart emails and push notifications to customers without any extra effort on your part.

2. Web Browser Push Notifications

Firepush’s abandoned cart appWeb Browser Push Notifications allows you to recover abandoned carts through push notification retargeting. They send reminders to customers who abandon their cart within 20 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours.

3. Abandoned Cart Recovery

Marsello’s  abandoned cart app Abandoned Cart Recovery allows you to create emails to recover abandoned carts. After you create your campaign, Marsello automates the process by sending the emails out on your behalf. You can create a second follow-up email to help increase your abandoned cart recovery rate. It includes a picture of the abandoned product, a call-to-action button, and allows you to offer your customers a discount code.

4. Abandoned Cart Messenger

Booster Apps’s abandoned cart app Abandoned Cart Messenger focuses on recovering carts with Facebook Messenger. Why? Because Facebook Messenger tends to have higher open rates than email. The cart abandonment app sends customers a series of messages via Facebook to increase your chances of getting that coveted sale. However, customers need to subscribe to your business’ Facebook page in order for the app to work.

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment 

abandoned carts

1. Offer a Secure Checkout

Shopify store owners can be assured that their online stores are secure. However, if you’re hosting your ecommerce website on another platform then your checkout might not be secure. When a customer lands on your checkout page the url should start with https://  the addition of the s showcases that the page is secure. If a customer is going through the checkout process and notices that the page isn’t secure, they may abandon their cart in order to protect their financial information.

2. Include Product Pictures at Checkout

When a customer is checking out, be sure to include a picture of the product(s) they’re purchasing. Having pictures helps customers to remember the product which they’re about to purchase. If a customer sees the picture of a product they’re about to impulse buy but having doubts the picture will help remind them why they want the product.

3. Show Savings at Checkout

Some brands choose to showcase product savings at their checkout. If you have a special promotion going on, like a storewide free shipping offer, it’s a great idea to let the customer know how much they’re saving — this will ease them into making a purchase.

4. Be Transparent With Costs

Be upfront with your customers about shipping costs. For example, if you offer free shipping for purchases over $50, but fail to mention it on your website, a customer may have ‘sticker shock’ when an item they have a purchase under $50 is an additional expense. Having a header banner on your website detailing your shipping thresholds helps customers know what to expect when they reach checkout. Also, if you only offer free shipping to certain countries, you should be upfront with international customers as they may abandon if shipping to their country isn’t free.

5. Offer Free Shipping

In one of our past articles, ‘Should you offer free shipping?’, we discussed when you should offer your customers free shipping. Shipping costs tend to be one of the biggest causes of cart abandonment. If your business can afford to offer free shipping, offer it to your customers to help lower cart abandonment.

Customers are more likely to pay for products using payment gateways they trust. Apple Pay and PayPal are some of the most popular payment gateways that you should offer on your store. When a customer recognizes the payment processor it builds brand trust.

7. Don’t Force Customers to Create an Account

While getting customers to create an account can be beneficial for your store, it can also lower conversions and increase cart abandonment. Allow customers the option to checkout as a guest to help decrease abandoned carts. Customers can feel overwhelmed by long checkout processes, so keep things simple.

8. Offer a Coupon Code

Offering a coupon code can help reduce cart abandonment. You can place the coupon code on your website, social media pages, and on coupon sites. Customers who are budget-conscious are less likely to abandon cart if they receive a discount for their purchase.

9. Optimize Your Store For Conversions

Optimizing your online store can boost conversions and reduce shopping cart abandonment. By focusing on simplifying the checkout process, pricing products effectively, and other store optimization practices, you work towards lowering your cart abandonment rate.

10. Add Social Proof

By having social proof notifications on your store, including product reviews on your product page, and showing icons that indicate how many people have bought that specific product, you can reduce cart abandonment. Sometimes all customers need is a bit of proof that they’re making the right choice buying products from your store. So invest time into proving that your product is worth it.

Abandoned Cart Email Examples

abandoned carts

Amazon: Amazon’s abandoned cart email includes small font text which draws emphasis on the large ‘View cart’ button. The product picture is clearly visible to remind you of the product. They also include three links back to their website or your cart placing the emphasis on going back to complete your purchase. The bottom of their email includes links to other product collections which can be useful if the customer isn’t interested in completing their purchase. No special offer is presented with their email.

abandoned carts

Glory: Glory starts it’s abandoned cart email with a simple question: ‘Why linger?’. They mention how easy it is to get the product as it can be purchased in ‘just a few clicks.’ They present a free shipping offer which was targeted as I didn’t purchase because of shipping. When free shipping isn’t available internationally, it’s generally safe to assume that carts were abandoned due to high shipping costs. However, when I went back to the site to use the discount code the offer didn’t work for customers outside the US. When presenting an offer to a customer be sure to send different offers to people of different regions otherwise your abandoned cart email won’t be as effective.

abandoned carts

Endy Mattress: Endy Mattress’ abandoned cart email offers customers who abandon their cart with a $50 discount to help land the sale. They also send a follow-up email. Endy maintains their offer with the follow-up email, but reminds customers that they’ve been offered a discount to try out the mattress. Their emails also include customer support contact information so customers can easily contact support if they have any questions. The email worked on me and I ended up making a purchase.

Tips for Sending an Abandoned Cart Email

abandoned carts

1. Send a Targeted Email

 When sending an abandoned cart email out to your customers you need to ensure that you tailor your emails for them. For example, you want to show your customers the product(s) they abandoned when sending an email or creating a retargeting ad. By showing them the product they abandoned, it becomes more likely that you’ll convert them into being a customer.

2. Figure Out Why They Abandoned

Test different offers to determine why customers are abandoning their cart. You can do this by running AB tests with your email provider you can send three identical emails with different offers such as free shipping, product discount, and free gift. The split test will show you how much money each email made which allows you to know how to proceed for future abandoned cart emails. Did an international order abandon because of expensive shipping rates? If so, add the ePacket and free shipping delivery methods to your store. Is your product too expensive? If your store is rarely getting orders but constantly getting abandoned carts, you might want to provide those who abandon cart a discount to make the product more affordable. You should also consider changing your product price.

3. Present a Compelling Offer

When recovering abandoned carts, you need to put your best offer forward to convert the browser into a buyer. Compelling offers could include a special discount, a free gift, free shipping, or even a small gift card that can be used on store purchases. Depending on how much information you have about your customer, you might want to present certain offers to certain customers — like free shipping in countries with high shipping rates. Ultimately, split testing will allow you to determine the best converting offer.

4. Follow-up

Sometimes sending one abandoned cart email isn’t enough. An email can get buried in someone’s account or get sent to a folder they rarely check. Other times the offer you’ve presented isn’t good enough to land the sale. Sending a second email can improve your odds. You can offer a higher discount or a different offer to hopefully land the sale.

Conclusion

When you recover abandoned carts, you give your store a second chance to grow your customer base, improve your sales, and sell your products. The cart abandonment reasons listed in this article need to be resolved to help improve your store’s sales performance. By reducing shopping cart abandonment, you can build a sustainable, long-term business and gain new loyal customers.

Have you tried to recover abandoned carts? What’s worked for you? Share in the comments below!

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