Turning Abandoned Carts Into Conversions

Over 80% of online shopping carts are abandoned at checkout. What do these abandoned carts mean for your e-commerce site? Should we accept these as lost sales? Or is there a way to convert a customer’s abandoned shopping cart into a successful sale?

Even though your customer has abandoned their carts at checkout, these users can be considered warm leads. By putting the items into their cart and then abandoning it, customers are saying, “We’re interested, but …” As we all know, it is much easier to convert warm leads than people who are just not interested. But how do you remind and encourage these leads to return to your site and complete their purchase?

It’s time for you to consider your abandoned cart strategy.

Abandoned Carts – A Strategy For Nurturing Warm Leads

Only 1%- 2% of shoppers convert on the first visit to an e-commerce store. By implementing an abandoned cart strategy, you can start turning disappointing, yet common, shopper behaviour into valuable sales opportunities.

Would-be customers may abandon the cart because they’ve run out of time to shop, they’ve suddenly lost interest, they’ve been disturbed, they have been distracted, they’ve lost confidence in your store, or they simply aren’t ready to make the commitment just yet. There are tried and tested ways to get their attention back to their abandoned cart.

Remarketing Ads

Remarketing is a strategy used to encourage users to return to their cart. With remarketing techniques, Intel increased its online conversions by 30%, and it can work for your e-commerce site too.

Remarketing includes any tactics used to engage a customer after an initial interaction. How does it work? Visitors to your site are tracked via their user ID, mobile advertiser ID or browser cookies. Your ads are served on other sites as they continue to browse. Remarketing gives you the opportunity to reach them wherever they go online.

There is so much competition online that, no matter how close they were to purchase, people who have visited your site may never find their way back. Bear in mind that it takes the average person nine or so visits to a site before actually making a purchase. This is where retargeting comes in.

You may think that being followed around the web would be irritating to your customers, but this isn’t the case.

• 25% of online viewers enjoy seeing retargeted ads because they are reminded of products and services they were looking at previously
• 47% of consumers say that they would sacrifice privacy to get a better deal
• And, because they are already interested, the click-through rate (CTR) is higher by 10 times than an unfamiliar display ad

Email Reminders

Emails are a useful kind of remarketing and should be used in conjunction with display ads. If you have a customer’s email address, you can reach out and remind them of the good reasons that they put the items into the cart in the first place, and encourage them to return to conclude their purchase.

But how do you get your hands on their emails in the first place?

• Capture email address as the first step of checkout. This way you can trigger an automatic email sequence, no matter the point at which your customer leaves your e-commerce site;
• When they click to leave the checkout page, abandoning their cart, a pop-up exit intent can offer a free gift (like an e-book, useful download or discount coupon) that can only be received through email;
• Another effective exit intent is to direct them back to their abandoned cart with the promise of “Free Shipping Today Only!”

Emails are time-sensitive and should be sent immediately if the lead is to be nurtured. Users are less likely to respond to an email that lands in their inbox even ten minutes after entering their details.

The value of email remarketing is that you are able to nurture warm leads into repeat customers through engaging content sent directly to them.

Easy Checkout

If your abandoned cart rate is higher than 80%, there could be something wrong with your checkout process. If checkout isn’t easy, there’s a problem.

Here are ways to avoid abandoned carts:

1. Shorten your check-out process. Aim for three steps from selecting a product through to completion of the sale.
2. Give customers multiple, easy payment options. If they see a familiar logo (like PayPal and Stripe) they’re more likely to trust your site and follow through with their purchase.

Recover Your Lost Revenue

Abandoned carts are a blessing in disguise because they offer real conversion opportunities. With the many remarketing tools available, you can recover lost revenue and increase your ROI, giving you a real advantage over your competitors.

We have implemented hundreds of abandoned cart strategies and are well aware of the impact it can have on a business. To explore how to get the most of your abandoned carts, or to implement your own abandoned cart strategy get in touch with us today! Our excellence in eCommerce website development and digital marketing means that we can take your online store all the way from strategy to execution.