Re-engaging Consumers After They've Left Your Site

What is an Abandoned Cart?

It is a common occurrence for an online shopper to be adding products to their cart, yet dropping off before the final purchase process. This is called cart abandonment. Any item that makes its way to the cart, but is not checked out, is considered to be abandoned.

A high abandonment rate would directly reflect on the poor shopping experience of the particular e-commerce page and hence is an important metric for the websites. You will be surprised to know that 69% of online cart items are abandoned by users.

Are there any limits to using 301 Redirect?

Why Do Online Shoppers Abandon Their Cart?

Some shoppers are mostly window-shopping online and are not very keen on checking. For these kinds of users, it is often a good idea to provide incentives on checkout to keep them attracted to the page. Apart from that, there are other reasons why interested and potential customers abandon their cart.

Shipping Charge

More often than not, the high shipping costs are the primary reason for online shoppers abandoning their carts. They keep adding products to their cart and can only view the high shipping costs once they reach the checkout page. This is where they change their minds and leave the site.

Payment Methods

Users tend to abandon their cart just before checkout once they realize that their preferred payment methods are not visible on the screen. Having unfamiliar payment methods could be a repellent here. It is always useful to include popular payment methods for easier checkout, like PayPal and other wallets.

Sharing Personal Details Online

Shoppers are usually hesitant to share personal details online. This would include crucial information like credit card details. If the e-commerce site does not have a strong reputation or brand image, this proves to be quite the problem. Providing easy return options and building trust in the brand could do you a lot of good here!

Load Times

Potential customers abandon their cart if the site pages take too much time to load. Internet users usually have a very low attention span. In this situation, if it takes a lot of time to load the checkout page, the customers tend to move on to another e-commerce page.

Understanding your audiences' needs and wants

How to Reduce Instances of Abandoned Cart

While there could be multiple reasons why users abandon their shopping cart, there are some ideas to help improve conversion rates and ensure that the shoppers do not quit the checkout process. There are essentially three phases involved in reducing shopping cart abandonment in the online shopping community.

  • Phase 1: Researching to understand the root causes of cart abandonment is imperative. This would include creating a hypothesis of the phenomenon. One interesting method for this would be to study analytics to get an idea of where the users dropped off from the e-commerce site. This directs the analysts to the pain points in the checkout process. Conducting user surveys or research could be another important method where you can understand the user mentality. Thirdly, you know how your site is working once you compare the checkout process with other contemporary competing sites.
  • Phase 2: The next step involves testing out the hypothesis to address the exact reasons for cart abandonment. The most common method for conducting this phase is A/B Testing. This works as an experiment conducted on the site users to understand how the shoppers work.
  • How does A/B testing work: Essentially, you would use the software here that would make some changes on the website through a visual editor. After that, it would divide the site traffic into two randomly generated groups. One of the groups would see the original site while the other would see the new changes implemented on the page. Once the A/B testing software collects all the data, it then moves on to mathematically analyze the information to derive insights from there.

    The statistical engine examines the two versions of the e-commerce page to understand which version works better with the users and which one causes more cart abandonment. This process thus removes all assumptions and highlights with certainty the exact pain points of the site.
  • Phase 3: The last step involves implementing the changes based on the hypothesis results to reduce shopping cart abandonment. For instance, if the statistical analysis stated that users tend to lose interest on the second page of the checkout process, the e-commerce site could either do away with it or put in incentives to keep the shoppers engaged there. Also, maintaining a visual indicator for the users to display their progress through the shopping or checkout process could help improve the conversion rates. Providing incentives and discounts to the users is another full-proof method.
How do you recapture the attention of your audience?

Shopping Cart Recovery

Ecommerce websites could experiment with several different solutions to ensure that potential customers do not abandon their cart. This could include adding discounts and offers, keeping the users engaged, and the likes. However, despite all the effort, some customers will still not complete the checkout process even after adding products to their cart. In this regard, the concept of shopping cart recovery becomes imperative. This refers to the process of getting the attention of the users once they have already abandoned their cart and left the website. There are two primary methods involved in shopping cart recovery.

Method 1 - Abandonded Cart Email

Every e-commerce platform requires the user to insert some personal contact information like an email address. Once they have quit the website, an abandoned cart email could be sent out to the users with an offer or discount to keep them interested in the site.

Method 2 - Ad Retargeting

Another useful method for shopping cart recovery is abandoned cart retargeting. This essentially means that an ad pixel is placed on the checkout page that tracks the users’ preferences and likes. Once they abandon their cart, these products could be marketed to the users through their social media profiles like Facebook and the likes. That means, even without an email id, the website could stay connected to the user.

For any e-commerce website, the objective is to improve conversion rates and reduce abandoned carts. An abandoned cart is also a disadvantage for online shoppers. A/B testing and abandoned cart emails are often useful methods in this process.