SOS Abandoned cart: the recipe to recover the customer

One of the most recurring problems for an E-Commerce site is the abandoned cart. If the customer spent a lot of time on the E-Commerce site adding the products to the cart it means that he had an interest in concluding the purchase, but something went wrong. According to recent research, 75% of virtual carts are abandoned. Therefore, those who shop online abandon 3 out of 4 carts. 

Among the disturbing factors that most have a decisive impact on cart abandonment are attributable to the following: distractions, too high price, the person forgets about the cart, other sites have better offers, confusion, the person changed his mind, the person was just taking a look, problems during payment. To avoid cart abandonment you can resort to interesting solutions that allow you to transform the abandoned cart into sales for E-Commerce.

SOS Abandoned Cart: What are the main causes? 

Every owner of an E-Commerce site suffers the nightmare of seeing carts full of products abandoned just before purchasing. Unfortunately, it is a very frequent phenomenon and it is estimated that about 69% of users on the web abandon the cart when browsing E-Commerce sites. What are the reasons that push users to abandon the cart of an E-Commerce? 60% of E-Commerce visitors abandon the cart for the additional costs that are too high. 40% of visitors put items in their cart not because they really want to buy them, but just to keep an eye on them. In 37% of cases the site asks to open an account, the checkout process is too complex in 28% of cases, in 23% of cases visitors cannot calculate the total in advance. Among the other causes that determine the abandonment of the cart there are the errors and malfunctions of the E-Commerce site (20%), the site does not seem reliable (19%), the delivery times are too slow (18%). For 16% of customers who abandon their cart, the problem is the overall browsing experience. Not finding articles easily is a factor that pushes users to turn elsewhere and not to return to the site. In addition, the return terms are not satisfactory (11%), there are few payment methods (8%) and the additional costs are too high (4%). More and more users are browsing through mobile devices, and this makes mobile optimization a vital factor. The rate of cart abandonment by customers who browse via mobile is very high, and tends to grow even more if E-Commerce is not optimized for navigation, resulting slow and difficult to consult via smartphones and tablets.

E-Commerce Cart Abandonment: How to Avoid It? 

Cart abandonment is a problem that can be solved by applying some creative digital marketing techniques. 

Offer free or discounted shipping

Since shipping costs are an obstacle for many customers, zeroing or reducing costs is definitely a good idea. If you decide to offer free shipping, it is important that it is clear. You can place this information in a banner on your homepage and at the top of each page.

Effective calls to action

Another important element for an E-Commerce site is the call to action, or CTA, which should be relevant. It is good to use active verbs that call for action such as “buy” “buy” or “take” in combination with terms that give a sense of urgency such as “today!”. 

The role of mobile optimization

Mobile devices are important for sales, which is why mobile optimization is essential. All navigation must be optimized in such a way as to minimize the abandonment rate of the cart. This implies the need for mobile friendly navigation that makes it easy to click. In addition, you need to pay attention to the browsing speed: a loading time that exceeds 3 seconds pushes visitors to close the browser. In addition to adding the products to the cart, you need to facilitate the payment process, not only by credit card, but also with Apple Pay and other common methods on mobile. 

Offer more payment options

It is essential to offer more payment options. Customers who, for example, do not want to share credit card information will be able to easily pay by PayPal or cash on delivery. Many users prefer to stop the purchase if they do not find their preferred payment method. 

Email marketing 

By sending a sequence of abandoned cart recovery emails, the probability of getting to your potential customers will be higher and you will have a few more chances to win them over and seduce them with additional offers. You can try to send emails at different times, use other customer reviews as social proof, leverage loss aversion, insert product photos, opt for a more joking tone, and offer a discount code. The email that invites the user to return to the abandoned cart must have some characteristics: make clear the intention of the email with an obvious subject; make the brand immediately recognizable; personalize the content of the email with the name of the recipient and the forgotten product; create a sense of urgency and appeal to enthusiasm and be original. The purpose of the abandoned cart email is to bring back the navigation on the site by returning the person to the cart so that he perfects the purchase.  Follow-up emails are a winning technique and relying on web marketing specialists allows you to obtain those conversion rates that emerge from research done on online buying behavior.