Optimizing Your Store: Breathing Life Into Abandoned Shopping Carts [S02.E03]

Have you ever thought where exactly at your website are you losing your audience? Pretty much the answer depends on your store, and exactly on the shopping cart. Visitors who walked their way from the landing page of your eshop to a specific category or the product page, picked something to buy, but dropped the process...you won’t believe it, but this customer is a precious find for you. Why not to try getting them back to complete the order?

In this passage we’re not going to fill your heads with tons of tips on how to optimize shopping carts, the only thing that needs to be discussed is the number - 50%. Seems like 50% cart abandonment rate is pretty high, and you need to make serious brainstorm trying to understand what makes your visitors at the pre-last step of the check-out close the page. Most eCommerce specialists advise to work on shop conversion, while you’ll be working at it try to make...ok you’ve got me, now I’m going to give you some tips to use, they will surely increase the number of sales by "resurrecting" buyers who abandoned shopping carts.

First thing you need to do is to get customer’s email. Having it at your disposal you can keep in touch with your probably unhappy customer. One of the possible reasons that discourage your visitors are waaaay too long forms and dozens of lines to fill in. The most appropriate option is to ask your visitor’s email at one of first steps and don’t forget to ensure user that you will not send any marketing bull.

This is the next episode of the "Optimizing Your Store" series, here are the themes we've already covered:

• Understanding Online Store Performance. Key Metrics.
• Optimizing Your Store:
  • Conversion Rate;
  • Bounce Rate;
  • Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates;
  • Add to Cart Rates (Coming soon);
  • Email Marketing (Coming soon);
  • Re-targeting (Coming soon).

“Action Delay”

One of the most popular mistakes that makes everything go to hell is “action delay”. You may think: “Well..again 67 customers left products in the cart...damn it...but it’s already 9PM time to watch new episode of CSI: NY at CBS. Guess I’ll offer them some fatty discounts tomorrow”...and at this very moment when you start cooking popcorn your potential client, who’s not watching CSI, goggles hard to find another online store.

Next day, or the day after tomorrow, when you start thinking over an email with some discount... 10% of your previous visitors have already chosen products and are ready to buy them. Day after day this percentage increases and till the end of the week your chances to get at least one customer back equals 0!

According to recent study that involved more than 60,000 abandoned shopping carts, about 54 percent of those orders were successfully "resurrected" during the first 2-3 hours! It was also stated that 10 percent of the carts were recovered in 48 hours from the moment visitor left the site. Any period of time over this limit reduces the chances to return the client exponentially.

An ideal reminder for your potential customers will be a triple email notification:

1. An email sent during the same day.
2. An email sent within 3 days.
3. An email sent not later than in a week after uncompleted order was noted.

Best if all three of letters will have different content and will personalize the store and its objectives. Be creative when writing these letters, because it's their language that will return visitors back. Good idea to use photos of people smiling happily. Psychologists proved that smiles are beneficial to every person, even if they get an unwanted message.

Here we need to make a small but important clarification - do not use the discount offer, or a gift in the first of a triple-letter mailing. Let the first "sound" as unobtrusive and friendly reminder about something that buyer forgot to accomplish.

Some Interesting Articles to Read

16 Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is a common ecommerce problem, where a visitor has entered a store, added items to their cart and/or begun the checkout process. But then they leave the site without completing the purchase.

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Shopping Cart Abandonment Solutions for Online Business

70% average shopping cart abandonment rate was observed for the majority of retailers. Since, on average, websites convert visitors-to-sales at a rate of 1% to 2% then 98% to 99% of the guests to your website leave without purchasing!

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Online Retailers: Fixing Shopping Cart Abandonment

Of the small percentage of retailers who are addressing abandoned carts, most are doing it poorly. Overstock.com is a perfect example. After conducting a similar price check-and-abandon mission, I was relieved to see a message in my inbox. But that was about the only thing Overstock did right.

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10 Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping Cart abandonment can easily lead to a headache for most retailers; however, it is easier for consumers to abandon their carts while shopping online rather than in a retail store. Shopping online can be easier than shopping in a retail store, but this increases the chance of abandonment.

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Shopping Cart Abandonment Practices of the Internet Retailer 1000 Companies

Shopping cart abandonment rates are on the rise. The average abandonment rate jumped from 71% to 75% during the rst six months of 2011. Why? More consumers are using online carts to compare prices before making a purchasing decision, both on their computers and smartphones.

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Rise of Shopping Cart Abandonment [Infographic]

Infographics are a great way to soak up a ton of interesting data in a visual way, and since we enjoy them so much here at Demac Media, we thought we’d share! This week’s choice is about The Rise of Shopping Cart Abandonment.

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Preventing Shopping Cart Abandonment

Following tips are based on the proven premise that with every other site being just two clicks away, a slight loss of confidence, irritating features or unexpected charges can lead to unnecessary abandonment.

Slideshows Dedicated to Optimizing Cart Abandonment

Shopping Cart Abandonment - 12 Tips to Improve Online Sales Conversions

By Ross Kramer

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Shopping Cart Improvement Study: Enhanced Checkout Flow & Increasing the Throughput of Transactions

By Matthieu Dejardins

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Cart Abandonment Email Marketing

By Silverpop

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Abandoned Cart Follow-up Strategy Best Practice & Recommendations

By WiTH Collective

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Coupon Marketing & Optimization to Decrease Cart Abandonment

By Web Analytics Hungary

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Decrease Cart Abandonment and Increase Revenue

By krose770

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What if We All Abandoned our Shopping Carts?

By Nurun

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SPEAK UP!

Who of you, dear readers, have an online store? What's your cart abandonment rate? What do you do to lessen this ratio? Feel free to use the comments section.