Reduce Lost Sales With 11 Abandoned Cart Recovery Strategy Tips For eCommerce

April 12, 2023

Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment in Ecommerce – 11 Strategies

As ecommerce continues to grow, so does the problem of cart abandonment. Online shoppers are getting more savvy, even to the point where they know to delay their purchase by a day leaving an item in their cart, because most ecommerce stores will entice them with a discount. “Cart abandonment” refers to the scenario where an online shopper adds items to their cart but then leaves the website without completing the purchase. To ecommerce store owners, it means lost sales and a missed opportunity for a loyal customer representing a lifetime value of revenue. In this blog, we will explore some abandonment cart strategies that online store owners can use to reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion rates.

I. The cart recovery conversation

Cart abandonment is a major problem for ecommerce store owners. In fact, on average, around 70% of all ecommerce carts are abandoned before the customer completes their purchase. 70% you say? Yep, and this means that you can safely assume that a solid percentage of people were never going to buy in the first place. This may help you feel a little better, but it really isn’t the right attitude. How do we impulse people over the line to boost revenues? Fortunately, there are some abandonment cart strategies that can help reduce customers fleeing, right at the point of pulling the trigger.

II. Optimise your checkout page & checkout process

The checkout process is one of the most important parts of an ecommerce store, and it’s also where many customers abandon their carts. To reduce online shopping cart abandonment rates, it’s important to optimise your website’s checkout process. Abandoned cart recovery can be done in a number of ways, such as simplifying the checkout process, providing multiple payment options, removing unnecessary form fields, using progress indicators, adding trust elements and providing a lightning-fast guest checkout option. Ideally, you want to make the transaction as simple for the customer as possible. Often, this all starts with designing for user experience and creating a flawless, pleasurable user interface. UX/UI Design is the architecture of any website development.

III. Use abandoned cart email marketing to remind customers

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be automated to remind customers of their abandoned carts. Let’s face it, we’ve all been on a lunch break, or waiting for a friend for coffee, when our shopping experience gets cut short and you need a little more time to think. Automated email marketing campaigns are an effective abandonment cart strategy as it allows you to directly target customers who have already shown a high interest in your products. Personalising the cart abandonment emails and providing incentives can help your opening rates, but also help increase the chances of customers returning to complete their purchases, but incentives aren’t always required. It’s best to measure with and without the incentive and see how your cart abandoners respond.

IV. Optimise your website for mobile users

With more and more customers using their mobile devices to shop online, it’s important not only to optimise your website for mobile users, but to build your ecommerce store for mobile in the first place. This can be done by ensuring that your website has a mobile-responsive design, a mobile-friendly checkout process, and by using mobile-specific features such as click-to-call buttons and touch-friendly navigation. Again, this starts with an excellent user interface and user experience design.

V. Provide excellent customer service

Providing world-class customer service is another important abandonment cart strategy. This can be done by including a well thought out FAQ section on your product pages, providing fast support on social media, and having an extremely easy, no cost return policy. Take the risk out of people purchasing from you and the inconvenience if the product isn’t quite what they’re looking for. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Yes, you might lose on the occasional order, but in the grand scheme of things, your conversion will increase and revenues will far outweigh the negative. By providing excellent customer service, you can help build trust with your customers and not only increase the likelihood of them completing their purchases, but becoming a repeat customer with a lifetime value of X years.

VI. Offer free or low shipping

Free shipping can help reduce cart abandonment rates. How many times have you been ready to commit, only to find that delivery costs are more than you find acceptable to swallow? You bounce to another online store looking for the same product with a better, more reasonable deal. But where’s the point at where a customer would bounce? Would they bounce at $1, $2, or even $5? Offering free shipping can be particularly effective, but you’re also giving away valuable revenues. Test and measure your abandonment rate with a $1 delivery cost instead of free and see what happens. Raise it incrementally and measure. Over a year of transactions, this could equate to substantial revenues.

VII. Use a free delivery progress graph.

Free delivery often bumps people across the line, but it’s often not thought of as an abandonment cart strategy. Let’s assume your average sale value is $74.21, so we decide to set your offer as free delivery over $85. Firstly, you may find that you can increase your average sale value, but secondly, if you display the customers progress on a bar graph, showing how close they are to free delivery when checking out, it takes their focus from a “yes or no” decision, to playing on one’s competitive nature while enticing them with a little win. Customers often just want to think they’ve had a win.

VIII. Shopper retargeting ads

Retargeting ads (remarketing) are yet another effective abandonment cart strategy. These ads target customers who have abandoned their carts and remind them of the products they were interested in. People are often distracted, or just want some time to think. The challenge with this is that once they leave, the buying impulse is lost. By personalising the ads, specific to the shopper’s interests, and using different types of retargeting ads such as social media ads and display ads, you can bring that impulse back to life and increase the chances of customers returning to complete their purchases. They return to a full cart and it’s an easy check-out process.

IX. Coupon Codes Increase Conversions

Shoppers are pretty darn savvy these days. They have coupon apps that share discount codes with users. If you’re selling a product, that’s sold elsewhere, it’s likely that you’ll get shoppers opening 3 identical items from 3 different online stores and comparing the final price. Often, the small coupon discount that you make public knowledge can be the deciding factor as to whether you win the business or not. Remember, the lifetime value of a customer is far greater than a small 1% discount to a small portion of your buyers.

X. Display Trust Elements

Trust signals are indicators that build trust between customers and your website, which can help reduce cart abandonment rates. Here are some trust signals that you can display on your website:

• SSL certificate: Display an SSL certificate on your website to ensure that customer data is secure.
• Customer reviews: Display customer reviews on your website to show social proof and build trust.
• Trust badges: Display trust badges from reputable organisations, such as the Better Business Bureau, to show that your website is trustworthy.

XI. Providing Clear Feedback & Guidance

Customers need clear feedback and guidance during the checkout process to ensure that they are completing the process correctly. UX/UI design can help provide that clear feedback and guidance by:

• Using micro-interactions: Micro-interactions are small animations or visual cues that provide feedback to customers as they complete the checkout process. For example, a visual cue could be used to show that a form field has been filled out correctly.
• Using clear language: UX/UI designers should use clear and concise language throughout the checkout process to guide customers through the process.

Conclusion

Let’s face it, people shop around. People are indecisive. People enquire and then sit on the decision, losing the impulse. A recent article on Hotjar states that 70% of users abandon their shopping carts, so don’t beat yourself up too much. Know the facts and just do your best to make incremental changes with best practices and common sense.

If you’re struggling to reduce cart abandonment rates on your ecommerce store, the first thing you should do is check that your payment methods are working across all devices. There could easily be a usability bug that’s preventing people from transacting. If that all check out, then consider seeking help from a digital marketing agency like Thinkroom. It’s likely that you’ll get a UX/UI overhaul and a calibration on your google analytics. With our expertise, we can help you implement effective abandonment cart strategies and improve your overall ecommerce performance.

Abandonment cart strategies are closely related to UX/UI design because the checkout process is a critical component of the overall user experience on an ecommerce website. A poorly designed checkout process can result in frustration for customers and increase the likelihood of cart abandonment. Therefore, UX/UI design plays a crucial role in reducing cart abandonment rates.

Reach out, we’re here to help.