So you’ve noticed that a lot of your customers abandon their carts before making a purchase. Sometimes they come back and complete the purchase hours or days later. Other times, they never come back, and you lose out on a potential sale. What’s causing this seeming indecision, and what can you do to stop it from happening?
There may be a few underlying reasons people abandon their carts before buying your goods or services. They may enjoy the thrill of shopping but become uncertain when it’s time to enter their credit card information. Or they may decide the taxes, shipping costs, and any other extra fees aren’t worth paying. In some cases, cart abandonment issues come down to customers simply getting distracted before they complete their purchases.
If you’re tired of dealing with cart abandonment issues, there are some things you can try. Taking proactive steps can have a big influence on your customers’ purchasing behaviors. Use these four persuasive tactics to get customers to return to their abandoned carts and complete their purchases.
1. Step Up Your Retention Marketing Game
Many business owners focus almost all of their marketing efforts on customer acquisition. While earning as much new business as possible is important for growth, you don’t want to forget your current customers.
Retention marketing is just as important (or perhaps more important) than acquisition marketing. It involves targeting current customers to increase the frequency of purchases and encourage repeat purchases. Both of these actions will increase your customer lifetime value, which can boost the long-term profitability of your business.
Once a customer purchases something from you, they’re more likely to do it again (assuming the original experience was positive). A good retention advertising strategy can encourage repeat business and establish loyalty so your carts are less likely to be abandoned. Loyalty programs, referral programs, and email marketing are all good examples of retention marketing strategies that can lower cart abandonment rates.
2. Send a Reminder
Have you ever been interrupted in the middle of a task and couldn’t remember what you were just doing? Humans can be very forgetful, especially when they’re distracted while shopping online. They may have every intention of completing the purchase while shopping but forget what they were up to and never come back. The sooner you can get the customer to return to their cart, the more likely they are to finalize their purchase.
Email or text reminders can be extremely helpful for reclaiming abandoned carts. It’s generally best to send the first automatic reminder about an hour after the cart is abandoned. Make this message light-hearted and never pushy. Make it clear you’re simply reminding the customer of their pending purchase, just as any good friend would do.
If the customer doesn’t return to the cart, your system should send a second email or text about 24 hours later. Use this message to ask whether the customer had any problems making the purchase and provide customer service contact information.
Your final reminder email should ideally go out between days two and seven after cart abandonment. This is your last chance to earn the customer’s business, so it’s wise to include special discounts for cart items. Without being too aggressive, make it clear that the discounts are exclusive and will expire soon!
3. Make the Checkout Process Easy
Sometimes people abandon their carts because they’re put off by the difficulty of checkout. If you’ve ever been thwarted from making a purchase by all the “special offer” popups, you know this firsthand. Your customers shouldn’t feel like they have to jump through hoops to buy a product from you. If they do, you’re doing something wrong.
According to surveyed customers, the top reason they abandon their carts is extra costs at checkout. Many customers have grown accustomed to free shipping because so many retailers offer it. For this reason, if they discover they are responsible for shipping costs, it can feel like a punishment. You can encourage customers to complete their purchases by offering free shipping and never adding any surprise fees at checkout.
A long or cumbersome checkout process is another common reason people don’t finalize their purchases. Avoid the urge to upsell customers at checkout by forcing them through a convoluted maze of special offers. That’s one of the quickest ways to get them to leave their carts and never shop with you again. Ideally, checking out should be quick and painless. You can allow new customers to create an account, but never force them to as part of the checkout process.
4. Reach Out to Customers Before They Leave
Most of these tips focus on how to get customers to come back after they’re already abandoned their carts. But what if you could prevent cart abandonment in the first place? More businesses are trying to do just that by reaching out to customers before they navigate away from their website.
You can use popups to quickly get your customer’s attention and convince them to finalize their purchases before they leave. The popup is only activated when the customer begins to navigate away from the purchase screen. When this happens, you can program a friendly message to pop up and create a sense of urgency.
Make sure your popup doesn’t look like spam, or you could scare your customers away forever. Instead, it should be a friendly, lighthearted message designed to convince the customer to buy. You can add a sense of urgency by offering free shipping or a discount if the customer quickly checks out. Include images of items in the customer’s cart to make the popup reminder personal and targeted.
If you’re tired of your customers’ carts being dropped like a bad date, make the checkout process more attractive. By focusing on retention marketing, sending reminders, and making the checkout process easy, you can improve your abandoned carts rate.