Abandoned shopping carts? Why that’s actually great news for your business

It’s one of the things that drive online merchants crazy. You work hard to get your products online with great descriptions and user reviews only to have purchases 95% complete and languishing in abandoned carts. It may be frustrating, but abandoned carts are actually an incredible business opportunity that your competitors may not be capitalizing on.


Featured Video: ULTIMATE REVIEWS PLUGIN FOR WORDPRESS


 

Abandoners are easy to convert

Depending on which study you read, only 1-5% of online shoppers buy on their first visit. If you have shoppers getting to the cart stage and going through your check-out process you have customers that are very interested in your products. At this stage they are usually verifying the final price for a number of items together, checking the final price with taxes and shipping or trying out discount codes. Converting these carts into sales is actually easier than you think. Sending an automated, targeted email reminder, a coupon, free shipping offer or purchase add-on opportunity can help convert sales. In fact, according to Salecycle, recovery emails are opened nearly 50% of the time.

Here are a few examples of recovery emails from The Anatomy of a Winning Cart Abandonment Email:

nordstrom
Nordstrom Cart Recovery Email

 

Fwd__Snap_me_up_before_I_m_gone__-_birdyloupromo_gmail_com_-_Gmail
Asos Cart Recovery Email

 

You_didn_t_complete_your_purchase____-_birdyloupromo_gmail_com_-_Gmail
Mothercare Cart Recovery Email

An opportunity to connect

Abandoned cart recovery emails are also a great way to connect with customers. Try offering the users a discount for signing-up for your newsletter or following you on social media:

Hey you forgot something in your cart!

Was your checkout interrupted? Get your stuff before it’s gone! Sign-up for our newsletter and save 15 % on this purchase.   

Frank business analysis

Abandoned carts are also a great way to find out what you could be doing better. Shipping costs, a long checkout process and requiring too much personal information in your account sign-up process are things that turn-off customers. Try using a survey in some of your cart recovery emails to ask clients for their opinions in exchange for a coupon.

A special discount just for you!

Can you help us out? Answer three questions and we’ll give you 15% off these items left in your cart.

  1. Did you find our checkout long or complicated?
  2. What was the main reason you didn’t complete your purchase?
  3. If we offered (guest checkout, free shipping etc.) would have purchased today?

Don’t forget there are other reasons besides price that leads to abandoned carts, like bad internet connections and customers running of time to make their purchase. So before you write-off abandoned carts as a time-waster, recognize it instead as an opportunity to recover business and sway customers away from your less-attentive competitors.


Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more Marketing, E-commerce and WordPress tips and browse our catalog of easy-to-use WordPress plugins.

Call to action box goes here
Need a Plugin to Improve Your Site?
Browse Plugins Now
Enhance your site’s FAQs with AI
Enhance your site’s FAQs with AI

Whether you’ve been running a website for a long time or are just setting one up, you know the importance of having a good FAQ page. This becomes even more crucial if you’re running an online shop/e-commerce site. Up until very recently, the only way to create your FAQs was good old fashioned typing them…

Visitor-Submitted FAQs for WordPress
Visitor-Submitted FAQs for WordPress

Often, the people best placed to know what questions your users will run into when using your product or service are the users themselves. With a premium license for our Ultimate FAQ WordPress plugin, you can allow visitors to your site to submit their own questions, along with (optionally) their proposed answers to those questions,…

FAQ Custom Fields for WordPress
FAQ Custom Fields for WordPress

In this post, we’ll show you how to create custom fields for your FAQs, as well as re-order the FAQ elements in the Ultimate FAQ WordPress plugin. We’ll start with custom fields, which you’ll need a premium license to use. We’re going to add a field called “Priority”, with options for “High”, “Medium” and “Low”….

Discover More Posts
Browse Plugins Now