Shopping Cart Abandonment Part I

With today’s post we want to discuss one of the biggest and most bothering issues in ecommerce: Shopping Cart Abandonment. What are the causes for shopping cart abandonment and what can you do against it? Just like you cannot convert every website visitor to a customer, you cannot prevent certain customer groups abandoning their carts. You can however apply a number of smart tactics to minimize this number and to make the lost sheep that did abandon their carts come back and make the sale.

So first, what are the causes? It must be said that there is a general trend of increasing dropout rates among the whole B2C ecommerce sector ( 75% and climbing! ). This has to do with the increasingly critical mindset of online shoppers, who are always looking for the best deal for their specific product. This means that an abandoned cart does not always embodies a lost sale, as it is often just a step in the buying process. Therefore it is important to make a distinction between lost sheep for which the dropout is part of their own buying decision and between those that dropped out because of frustration over the process. Revenue-increasing tactics can be applied for both, today we cover the first part: The delayed choice dropouts.

The delayed choice dropouts

These are the people in an ‘orientation state’, looking around on the web to find the best deal on your product. Once these abort they might be planning to come back. It doesn’t hurt however, to give them that push back and to optimize the circumstances for their return. To capture as many lingering sheep as possible, you should:

Make use of remarketing

With Google Adwords you can set up a remarketing campaign quite easily. The report of SeeWhy showed that this can result in a 18% increase in sales.

Make use of email follow-ups

If your dropout left his email during the checkout process, send a hearty email to keep yourself in the picture.

Welcome returning visitors

SeeWhy estimated that 90% of the online sales were made by people that already knew the site. This shows how important loyalty and trust is in online ecommerce.

Save the shopping cart

Keep the abandoned shopping carts active for at least 60 days after abandonment. They take up little memory, but are a strong tool to entice returning visitor to make that sale after all.

Implement

Exactly because loyalty and trust is so important, having a person available on the website through live chat can bring powerful gains. With Userlike you can save the name and email of the visitor, allowing you to welcome him when he returns. Our integration with crm software allows you to accumulate the info of these returning visitors in one place, allowing you to stay up to date with their status.

Truly yours,

The Userlike Team