Cart abandonment is a major challenge every online store owner faces. Statista says that 40% of online retail orders in clothing have been abandoned as of March 2018. The same statistics also reveal 18% for tech, 16% for homeware and the list depicts that most of the industries are not spared from facing the cart abandonment issue.
The biggest challenge in eCommerce is in making the customers complete their purchase process. To reduce the cart abandonment rates and increase your revenue, here are six proven techniques you should adopt right now!
Personalize marketing emails
Send a cart abandonment reminder email as soon as your customer abandons the cart. Use the customer’s name in the subject line, make it more personal with ‘friendly’ and ‘catchy’ copies. Build campaigns customized for individual shoppers in your database. If your database is large, segment customers based on the key criteria like age and email them based on their shopping behavior.
Send emails to the inactive customers who have not visited your site for a long time. Make use of the customer’s shopping behavior data to strategically plan the mailer campaigns aiming for maximum conversion. Schedule automated emails for achieving high email open rates while engaging them to take action like completing their abandoned carts.
Exit Intent Pop-up
Trigger an exit pop-up when customers try to close the browser tab. Help them quickly complete the transaction with your pop-up. When you don’t intervene while the customer is about to exit your online store, you are losing potential customers pretty badly. It is highly recommended to show a pop-up for retaining the customer when they exit. Use customer’s shopping behavior to prevent cart abandonment. Set behavioral triggers to automate popups and increase conversions.
Make efforts to customize your pop-ups for cart abandonment. If your profit margin doesn’t hurt, reveal discounts or create a sense of urgency like ‘limited stocks’ when showing exit intent pop-ups. This will increase the chance of bringing back the customer to finish the cart.
Triggered Email
Nearly 50% of customers abandon their cart with an intention to revisit later. Since they get easily distracted, triggered emails have a great potential to alert and encourage them to complete the checkout process.
Sending triggered emails will help them complete the transaction. You can start by sending the first email that appeals their emotion, the second with a discount and the third with a limited period offer or ‘only a few left’ to create a sense of urgency. In fact, scarcity has been a proven psychological trick that will urge customers to buy quickly and therefore help online retailers sell more.
Simple Checkout
Customers who find the checkout process time-consuming tend to easily abandon carts. Optimize the checkout process by reducing the steps as well as completion time. Having a progress indicator can help reduce the customer’s anxiety and give them the feeling that the checkout process is transparent and quick.
It is highly recommended to save customer’s preferences during checkout. An example is Amazon’s pre-stored delivery address and preferred payment method which helps customers to quickly complete the checkout process and saving time. As always, A/B testing is the best way to find out if the new changes in your checkout process suit your target audience.
Customer Reviews
User reviews have a major influence in making purchase decisions among online shoppers. Showcasing user reviews in emails improve conversion rates drastically. Having real user reviews in the online store is one of the major conversion factors. Nearly 70% of online shoppers check online (product) reviews before making a decision.
You can automate the review collection process by reaching out to all your customers who have not provided their product feedback after purchase. A smarter way is to collect ultra-quick review in the form of star ratings (0 - 5) as it won’t take more than a minute for customers to rate the product. Beware of fake and spam reviews as it badly affects your product credibility. It is recommended to moderate each and every review before it goes online. TargetBay is one of the leading personalization tools that you can use for customer reviews.
Summary
Implementing techniques like exit intent pop-ups, triggered emails, simplifying checkout and adding customer reviews, have drastically reduced cart abandonment rates. Ultimately, it is all about clearly understanding the intentions behind a buyer’s cart abandonment behavior and addressing their pain points. Start implementing these techniques one by one and you’ll soon reap more profits and increase your eCommerce sales.