Every online retailer hates shopping cart abandonment, it’s frustrated to see valuable product viewers left at the last stage of the sales funnel. Since getting traffic is more and more difficult and expensive, the sales funnel is literally a money funnel, the high shopping cart abandonment rate equals to losing money. As the eCommerce order fulfillment service providers in China, with years of experience, NextSmartShip will provide some tips to prevent and deal with shopping cart abandonment.
Some reasons for cart abandonment
- High shipping cost
- High product price
- Slow shipping
- Need more consideration
- Unclear shipping/return info
- Complex check-out process
- Website too slow
- Extra taxes
How to prevent it?
By improving the website presentation, setting up more reasonable item categories, adding cross-selling links, etc., online store owners can effectively increase the product viewed per user and shopping cart adding conversion rate, how to reduce the cart abandonment rate? One of the most useful ways is offering free shipping because the most common(44%) cause is high shipping cost, but remember to use it wisely.
Offer multiple shipping options including free shipping.
Online shoppers like to have options, it gives them the feeling of taking control. According to statistics and some case studies, about 7% of online shoppers abandon items to their cart because they can’t get the shipping option they need. For example, for last-minute Christmas shoppers, shipping speed means everything, when they are ready to pay more for overnight shipping or 2-day shipping, the estimated shipping time shows “7-14 days”, they will give up without hesitation. But for low-price item buyers, free shipping is the best, they don’t care that they will wait for 2 weeks. So if it’s possible, it’s better to provide 3 or more shipping options
- Free shipping
- 2 days shipping
- 4-7 days shipping
Provide free shipping with conditions.
It means setting some free shipping thresholds, the free shipping option only shows when the buyer checking out the cart to qualify for free shipping.
Free shipping for orders over a certain amount ($100/$200/$300): The number like 100, 200, 300 are the psychological triggers that will make people feel it be “expensive”, even $99,99 sounds cheaper, so offering free shipping at these points are very useful. More than that, setting a minimum order amount for free shipping is a good strategy of up-selling as well as reducing cart abandonment. Online shoppers prefer paying an extra $99 to buy more items to pay for the $10 shipping.
Free shipping for particular items: It’s called “bait and switch sale”. You can choose the best seller and provide a special offer, such as free shipping. Potential customers will be attracted to your online store because of it, then they may be attracted by other products, as a result, they pay for a lot of items in the shopping cart, not only the “bait item”. Not only that, you can carry it one step further, provide free shipping as long as the order includes a bait item(just remember to set a maximum weight). The strategy will become an effective way to increase sales and the average amount of orders, both of them bring larger profit margins.
Time-limit free shipping: Set a limit time and show the dynamic countdown, it gives consumers a sense of urgency, shorten the decision-making time and make them buy more.
In conclusion, a good eCommerce shipping fulfillment strategy can make a great contribution to marketing, especially during holidays.
How to deal with it?
Cart abandoners will return, as long as you know how to pull them back, after all, cart abandonment also means the intention of buying.
Use popups to detain the abandoning viewers.
Popup is the fastest way to detain customers, a pop-up saying that “you can get a shipping coupon or a 10% discount” will instantly bring most of the leaving customers back. There is a psychological trick: try to make it emotional, use sentences like “Is it something I said?”, “Please don’t leave me”, and use the picture of a crying baby or sad puppy, something like that, they will make the cart abandoner feel like a literally “abandoner” and instantly do something about it.
Send remarketing emails regularly.
Good remarketing strategies help to develop customer loyalty and get more long term customers. It is also a good way to bring the already left customers back. Researches show that cart abandoners response to remarketing emails more positively, about 3 times of ordinary buyers. This is because their previous purchase desire is not satisfied, as long as the unfavorable factors disappear, they will come back to complete the purchase. You can use multiple ways to collect emails: popups, VIP register, install plug-ins, etc.
Send 3 emails instead of just 1.
The best time to bring the cart abandoners back is within 1 hour, the conversion rate can be as good as 20%. It’s better to set an auto-send email, send the first emails every 1 hour, remind the just-left abandoners what they have missed. Make it casual, like a kindly remind, something like “Remember me? I’m in your cart” or “Something in your cart ”. The second email can be a little more assertive, the “moderately aggressive” is OK: “The shopping cart won’t be held longer” or “Complete your purchase before they sell out”, make sure the second email is sent within 24 hours and everyone who got them has got the first email earlier. The 3rd email is supposed to be the last one, it’s better to stop before your customers feel bored. This email can be more like a normal remarketing email, offering coupons, new arrivals, discounts, etc. Usually, the conversion rate will be lower at this stage, but you still have the opportunity to get future consumers, it is important to leave a good impression on them.
Get a good email sending tool
Shopify has a built-in tool to recover abandoned carts, you can click the Send a cart recovery email button and try to bring the abandoner back. But do it manually will be overwhelming if you got a lot of abandoned carts, and it will be harder to manage if you send different emails to different customers, so it’s better to make several lists and use email sending tools. Normally the tools of sending emails to under 2000 customers are free.
