Lost sales are the biggest challenge for any Magento store owner, and cart abandonment is the most common reason for this. Baymard Institute reports that:
The average cart abandonment rate is about 70%. In terms of revenue, businesses lose $18 billion each year due to cart abandonment.
That’s a huge number!
Across the globe, there are 250,000 merchants that use the popular e-commerce platform Magento, so if you are struggling with lost sales and abandoned carts, you’re not alone.
It’s a challenge that every online store owner encounters at one point or another, but the good news is that by employing the right strategies, you can easily turn your lost sales into conversions.
In this post, we will uncover the reasons behind cart abandonment and ways you can recover lost sales. But before that, let’s first understand the term “cart abandonment.”
What Is Cart Abandonment?
Simply put, cart abandonment is a term used to describe an instance where customers add items to their online shopping cart but leave the checkout process without completing the purchase.
More cart abandonments not only mean less conversions, but unpleasant customer experiences, too.
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Top 4 Cart Abandonment Triggers
Several reasons may cause a user to leave the checkout flow without completing their purchase. Let’s look at a few of the most common, yet often overlooked, reasons behind cart abandonment.
1) High Surplus Charges
Several e-commerce store owners overlook the negative impact of adding extra costs, such as shipping, tax and other fees, at checkout.
In a cart abandonment survey conducted by the Baymard Institute, 53% of the respondents agreed that they left the checkout without buying because of the extra costs and hidden fees associated with their purchase, which weren’t mentioned upfront.
2) Forced Registration
More often than not, forcing your customers to register if they want to buy from you may cause them to leave the checkout flow without completing the purchase.
In fact, over 31% of U.S. shoppers admitted that they discontinued their order as they were unable to proceed further without registering. With an overwhelming number of e-commerce sites to choose from, your customers desire the flexibility and convenience of completing their purchase without creating an account – particularly if it’s their first time and they’re not sure if they will return.
3) Checkout Process Is Too Long or Complicated
An intricate checkout process can turn off a good number of your customers. When your customers have already invested their time in curating the products they want, you simply don’t want to tangle them up with an incomprehensible checkout process.
Moreover, your checkout flow shouldn’t be more than four steps. The probability of losing your customers increases with every additional checkout step, so the fewer the steps, the better.
4) Site Is Too Slow
In the same survey, 16% of respondents admitted that they left the checkout page as the site was very slow. Other research on e-commerce site speed shows these numbers:
- Effect on Sale: 79% of customers who report dissatisfaction with website performance are less likely to buy from that same site again.
- Conversion: 1 second delay means a 7% reduction in conversions
- Speed Affects Revenue: If your site makes $100,000/month, a one second improvement in page speed brings $7,000 month
While these four reasons seem to account for the most number of lost sales, there are many more triggers to cart abandonment. For instance, customers may leave the checkout if they are unable to pay or don’t trust the site. And factors such as return policy, technical inconsistencies and poor customer service can also hamper your conversions:
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Ways to Recover Lost E-commerce Sales
Overcoming lost sales is an enormous challenge not only for Magento merchants, but also for the entire e-commerce industry.
Optimizing your store’s checkout experience can increase the number of conversions by 35% – which means that $260 billion is recoverable through a better checkout process!
To help you combat the cart abandonment behemoth, we’ve prepared a list of strategies you can implement today.
Analyze & Optimize Your Checkout Experience
If you’re getting fewer conversions, analyzing your e-commerce website’s checkout should be the first thing to do.
To help you understand your users’ behavior on your e-commerce site, you can use tools such as:
A thorough checkout analysis will uncover several pain points you could address.
For instance, if your mobile visitors are having a hard time completing their purchases, you should consider making your website mobile-friendly. If you see a lot of visitors meandering from one step to another, that probably indicates that your checkout flow isn’t intuitive enough.
A one-step checkout extension can help you significantly enhance your store’s checkout experience by bringing all the steps onto a single page.
Best checkout optimization practices:
- Keep the checkout experience self-explanatory
- Design a one-page checkout to minimize cart abandonments
- Limit the checkout steps to four
- Eliminate all optional checkout fields
- Make the checkout experience mobile-friendly
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Send Recovery Emails
Cart abandonments are not always intentional. Oftentimes they are caused due to a technical glitch or an unwanted distraction. And that’s why abandoned cart emails can be very effective.
If a customer proceeds all the way to the last step, it’s a good indication that they are surely interested in buying the product. This means that they only need a nudge to complete the purchase – and recovery emails can provide exactly that nudge.
Check out these recovery email stats:
- 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened
- 21% of people clicked on the link
- 50% of those who clicked on the link then finished the purchase
You can start sending abandoned cart emails through your Magento 2 store by using an abandoned cart email extension:
For successfully recovering lost sales, your email must be well-designed and visually appealing. You can also consider incentivizing customers by offering a discount coupon or a complimentary gift. Doing so will increase the conversion ratio a great extent.
Best abandoned cart email practices:
- Your email should contain a strong subject line, engaging copy and a powerful CTA.
- Create urgency by offering an incentive for a limited time.
- Send the email at the right time – 60 minutes is considered an ideal time frame for the first recovery email.
- Ask your customers if they need any help in completing their purchase and include the direct email or phone number where they can get that help.
- Consider going multi-channel with SMS abandonment campaigns to supplement your emails
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Leverage Paid Ads
Paid ads is a great way of retaining lost sales. In fact, retargeted ads can bring 26% of shoppers back to your site:
What’s more, research shows that personalized retargeted ads can lead to ROIs of over 1,300% – and can help you reach those customers who abandoned their carts.
There are several platforms you can use to effectively retarget your customers, such as:
With your customers spending most of their time online, these platforms will go a long way in helping you recover lost sales.
Best paid ads practices:
- Use visually engaging images
- Keep the call-to-action clear and concise
- Personalize the ads
- Make sure your target keywords are in your product listings
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Push-Notify Your Customers
Web push notifications have started taking the place of traditional email marketing campaigns. The real-time delivery, high engagement, and ease of use are only a few reasons behind their rapid adoption.
You can use push notifications to send personalized browser notifications to remind your customers about the items they’ve left in their cart within a certain timeframe:
Web push notifications, when sent in a timely fashion, will not only help you earn lost sales, but also boost engagement in your store. When it comes to your Magento store, you can enable these notifications by integrating a push notifications extension on it:
Such an extension will help you create and send notifications in real-time with just a few clicks.
Best web push notifications practices:
- Send users personalized push notifications
- Encourage users to complete their purchase by offering a discount
- Embed a direct link to their cart page
- Provide support information — in case they’re looking for some help
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Add Exit-Intent Pop-Ups
Exit-intent pop-ups are one of the best means of recovering abandoned carts. You can prevent customers from abandoning their carts by observing their behavior on your web page.
You can configure exit-intent pop-ups to be triggered the moment a customer is about to leave your checkout process without completing the purchase:
Through an exit-intent pop-up, you can retain your customers by giving them an irresistible offer. It could be a discount code, a freebie or simply free shipping. Just make sure that the offer is compelling enough to actually retain your customers.
In a Magento store, you can add an exit-intent pop-up extension that does the job well.
Best exit-intent pop-up practices:
- Keep the pop-up clean and minimal
- Make sure the pop-up is aesthetically pleasing
- Give your customers an irresistible offer
- Boost their trust by embedding testimonials in the pop-up
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Personally Reach Out to Them
You should also consider reaching out to your customers personally.
While this can also be automated through tools and software, reaching out to them personally via a call or an email still helps. Oftentimes, you will find that a cart was abandoned because the coupon code didn’t work or their desired payment method wasn’t available.
Personally getting in touch with these frustrated customers will not only recover lost sales, but also increase their loyalty and trust. They’re always going to remember the brand who reached out to them personally to offer help before they even complained!
If that’s not possible for your business, you can consider investing in software that does that for you. But keep in mind that no matter how advanced or sophisticated the software you use, a human connection is always better.
Best practices for reaching out to your customers personally:
- Be polite and friendly, no matter how upset they get
- Ask if they need any help to complete their order
- Inquire as to why they abandoned their cart: Was it intentional or just due to some technical glitch?
- Be genuinely interested in helping them; don’t try to hard sell anything!
By successfully executing on the strategies discussed here, you will be able to gain a good number of lost carts. Keep expanding your list by trying out new tactics that you think can be useful.
Cart Abandonment Mistakes to Avoid
Designing an abandoned cart recovery campaign needs thorough consideration. Done incorrectly, your campaign can do more harm than good.
Here are a few mistakes you should avoid while attempting to recover lost sales:
- Don’t overwhelm your users by sending a lot of emails. Send up to 3 emails: the first, 60 minutes after a cart abandonment; the second, one day after abandonment; the third, three days after abandonment.
- Offer a strategic and well-calculated discount. You don’t want to gain one sale but lose overall business. Be strategic while offering discounts.
- It’s okay to lose insatiable customers. You shouldn’t go above and beyond what you can offer.
- Don’t rely on a single channel for reaching out to your customers. Reach out to them through multiple channels and mediums.
Knowing the pitfalls beforehand will save you a good deal of business and reputation. Just be genuinely interested in helping out your customers, and you will be good to go!
Last Word on Cart Abandonment
Certainly cart abandonment is an issue faced by several Magento store owners. As discussed, there could be several reasons responsible for higher cart abandonment. A few of the most common reasons include:
- slow website speed
- technical inconsistencies
- high surplus charges
- poorly optimized checkout
If you’re seeking to minimize cart abandonment in your store, you must consider investing resources in optimizing the overall checkout experience. The tips we discussed today will certainly help you combat the cart abandonment problem.
And remember to keep refining your approach. Test your methods through A/B testing and retain whatever works for your store. Always be open to new ways of optimizing your customer’s experience since cart abandonments are often due to poor user experience.
With that being said, now’s your time to make the most of the tactics shared here and expand your online empire!
