Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment Using Conversion Marketing

Shopping cart abandonment is a challenge for online retailers. About 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before checkout. Online shoppers place items into their baskets and for various reasons leave the store without buying. Reasons for abandoning shopping cart differs from price and/or delivery terms being better elsewhere to something new and shiny catching the attention of the shopper. In 2015, shopping carts worth $4 trillion were estimated to be abandoned.

How To Approach Shopping Cart Abandonment

Online retailers try to reduce shopping cart abandonment in several ways. There are two different approaches to the topic. The first one is to focus on customer journey through the online store. With this approach, retailers conversion optimize their online store to cut down the abandonment rate. One of the key areas to focus on is the checkout process. It needs to be as painless as possible for the consumer. Some useful tips can be found here.

The second approach for saving shopping carts is to offer customers incentives to buy. These perks are offered at the very moment visitor is about to abandon his cart or sometime after the visitor has left the site. For example, the on-site perk might be done using a pop-up asking customer’s email in exchange for a discount code at the moment cursor leaves the browser window. If the basket is abandoned regardless, the visitor is likely reminded of it by email later on. It would not be unheard of for that email to include another incentive to buy, maybe a free expedited shipping. Another option for the retailer is to use retargeting to lure the consumer back to the online store where the cart is still waiting for his return.

Conversion Marketing Techniques For Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment

Conversion marketing means targeting otherwise non-converting website visitors with actions (chat, pop-up, etc.) and promotions (free shipping, discount code, etc.). Targeting these conversion marketing techniques accordingly reduces shopping cart abandonment.

Here are a couple of examples you can easily (and with little to no additional costs) try out on your online store:

1. Target indecisive visitors before they leave your online store

Use analytics to study how visitors move through the checkout process. Is there a step where a considerable amount of visitors drop out (return to browse products or leave the shop altogether)? Set up actions for catching those visitors.

Remind of existing perk
Behavior: Visitor reaches the second step of checkout process but returns to browse products.

Solution: Show a pop-up reminding of free shipping for orders over 50€. Target this reminder to only those with items worth over 50€ in their cart.

Chat with hesitant visitors
Behavior: Visitor stops on the first step of checkout. After a minute on the page, visitor abandons the cart and leaves the online store.

Solution: Set up a proactive chat for visitors who stay in the first step of checkout over 30 seconds.

2. Target returning visitors

Use retargeting and/or email marketing to attract visitors back to their abandoned carts.

Increase your trustworthiness
Behavior: Customer returns to your site from retargeting campaign landing on the product page.

Solution: Highlight experiences from existing customers. Create a pop-up highlighting five-star review for the item in question.

Use chat for that final push
Behavior: Visitor returns to your site from email marketing. Cart is saved and ready to be bought.

Solution: Set proactive chat to activate immediately. Offer help for finalizing that order. Maybe co-browsing is needed for navigating throug ordering process?

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This writing is originally published in giosg.com Ltd’s blog on April 20, 2016.