13 Tips to Increase Your Abandoned Cart Recovery

As you all know, abandoned carts are a common issue that eCommerce stores face. In fact, on average, 68% of ATC’s are abandoned! There are tons of reasons for this, but it’s important to understand some key methods in driving them back to checkout.

The first and most effective thing you can do is stay top of mind. The best way to stay top of mind is frequent exposure, which Facebook ads allow us to do better than any other platform. You can create retargeting stacks to get in front of a plethora of highly specific audiences based on when they triggered a certain action or when they last visited your website.

According to a 2018 survey from Statista, the most common reasons users abandon their carts are:

  • 56% of users abandoned due to hidden costs ie shipping, taxes
  • 37% of users left because they were just browsing
  • 36% found a better price somewhere else
  • 46% left due to a poor UX ie complicated navigation, too long of load time, too many steps, etc
  • 17% were concerned about security

Lower Abandoned Cart by Allowing various payment options

It’s important to note that your customers will prefer different payment methods. Whether this is PayPal, credit, crypto, or something like afterpay or sezzle; you should try and respect each of your customer’s payment preferences in order to avoid them abandoning your cart and taking their money elsewhere. Basically, just try to offer as many payment methods as you can!

Use Scarcity

Using Scarcity to lower Abandoned cart

Sometimes shoppers just need a little motivation to pull the trigger, and scarcity creates the urgency they need to make a decision now. Some strategies for implementing scarcity include:

  • Quantity Availability- show them how many units of the product are left in stock. If they see you are low in stock for the item they’re interested in, they are more likely to buy because of FOMO! (fear of missing out)
  • Countdown Clocks for free shipping- You’ve probably seen it on Amazon where they say “Want free 2-day shipping? Order within 10 hours and 31 minutes”, or something like that
  • Countdown Clocks for flash sales/special offers- When you’re running a promo and your customers see they only have limited time to take advantage of the deal, they’re less likely to waste time shopping around.

Eliminate Price Shock

A massive reason for cart abandonment is unexpected costs, ie when shipping costs and taxes only show up at the end of the checkout process. It’s better to be transparent about this upfront because once they have a price fixed in their head, any additional fees will push them further away from the sale. Use shipping calculators to avoid any surprises! (Another obvious workaround here is to offer free or discounted shipping based on order value).

Have Exit Intent Popups for re-engagement

Exit intent forms/popups are a great way to maximize conversions because it detects when a user is about to leave the page and displays a popup message that encourages them to finish checkout by offering a special deal or showing more info.

Send Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails

Abandoned Cart Emails

When someone abandons their cart, you’ll likely have captured their email address. Set up an autoresponder sequence to notify them that they left items in their cart. You can follow that up with 1-4 additional emails spread out over the next 48 hours. Even if they don’t buy, you can use one of your future emails to offer a discount to further incentivize the sale.

Include Social Proof for Better conversion

You want to avoid buyer’s remorse at all costs. If a customer is on the fence about purchasing, having positive testimonials and social proof will pay off in dividends for your conversion rates. This mitigates their concern by deploying your products’ benefits.

Increase Trust to lower Abandoned cart

This is similar to the above point, but playing more towards the personal/financial security side. Show your customer their info is secure with you by having a valid SSL certificate and recognizable security logos ie Verisign, PayPal Verified, etc.

Allow for Guest Checkout

During my days working retail, there were some people who didn’t want to sign up for free loyalty despite getting 5 bucks off their next purchase- even if they were regulars at the store! Moral of the story: don’t force customers to create an account to make their purchase. Always offer a guest checkout option, especially when all the information used to create an account is collected for billing/shipping and you can offer to save their information for future orders at the end by having them check a box!

Save The Cart

Save item for later on AMazon

Most online shoppers leverage the internet’s convenience via price comparison. A user can have several tabs open, find the same/similar products, compare prices, and decide which one to buy. There’s a lot of back and forth here, and if they close a window, you risk losing their cart. Make sure that your customer’s carts are saved so you can retarget those who have ATC without completing checkout. There are several options and tools for doing this depending on your store’s provider.

Simplify Navigation

Eliminate unnecessary pages and streamline the process. The more clicks you make a user take, the more likely they are to abandon their cart. Keep the number of clicks until checkout as close to 3 as possible:

  • Click on a product
  • ATC
  • Checkout

Have Killer Creatives

Since users can’t physically touch or hold the products in your store, having professional photos from multiple angles, and even video makes it much easier for the customer to gain a deeper understanding of them. If they’re even a little bit unsure of whether the product is necessary for their wants/needs, they’re less likely to buy. Show images of the product actually being used that tells a story about its benefits.

Make it Easy for Your Customers to Ask Questions

Users will have questions about the product before and during the checkout process. Have a clear link to your FAQ page and give them the option to reach out directly. Support email addresses are good, and a chat feature is ideal if you’re able to offer it.

Personal Followup to lower abandoned cart

You may not want to put all your eggs in one basket with autoresponders. When you see an abandoned cart notification, reach out and personally ASAP, and ask them if there’s anything you can do to guide them. Perhaps offer a discount or a personalized message about the item in their cart. You may find they had an issue with their payment, an invalid coupon, or some other question.

Have a Question? Get in Touch!



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