3 Tactics To Recover Abandon Carts
69.99% - The Average Cart Abandonment Rate.
It is a scary number given all the effort and money spent to bring traffic to your site, go through the conversion funnel, only to have nearly 70% of them drop off at the end.
A standard cart abandonment series would include a discount, like 10% off to nudge customers over the hurdle. It is so prevalent that users on Reddit advise others not to buy until they try abandoning a cart to snatch up a discount.
Let’s pause and think for a moment. Is not having a discount the only thing that prevent customers from purchasing?
Many researches, including the one done by Baymard.com showed that there is a range of reasons; top 5 include:
- extra costs too high: shipping, tax, fees (48%)
- the site wanted me to create an account (24%)
- delivery was too slow (22%)
- I didn’t trust the site with my credit card information (18%)
- too long/complicated checkout process (17%)
A discount offer that seemed to work for cart recovery prevents you from understanding the various underlying causes of cart abandonment.
You must be aware of the reasons to address your customer’s specific objection head-on.
1. AI Chatbot
You could leverage the tactic Ashwarya Garg shared to collect these insights.
Ashwarya moved their abandon cart recovery to an AI-driven WhatsApp Bot to offer a concierge-like personalized experience. It is an invaluable opportunity to identify what's preventing the customer from buying, collect the relevant information, and offer help.
If you notice that price is a major concern for the customer, don't just offer a discount. Instead, try to identify the real reason behind their hesitation.
Something like highlighting your risk-reversal options, such as "30-day free return, no questions asked".
If they're hesitating because they're unsure of the product's value, you could show social proof through customer testimonials or press coverage.
Once you identify these underlying reasons, prioritize addressing them during the customer's shopping journey to reduce cart abandonment instead of focusing solely on cart recovery. You can also incorporate these reasons into your recovery series to address different objections.
2. Just Ship It
For some users that you know they are right on the edge their seat about to buy, like having their addresses already filled out. This is a group of people that are already bought into your product and unlikely to be big in size, the ultimate cart recovery tactic for them is to JUST SHIP IT TO THEM.
Randy Mchhugh shared a photo of his friends receiving a free product from Hard Ketones after abandoning their cart.
This is an especially cool tactic for acquiring the first 1000 customers, or rather, more valuable, 1000 true fans.
If your math is mathing, the cost of these free products should be way less than the LTV this cohort of user brings through being loyal customers and referring more businesses.
3. Simple Emoji
A simple tactic Adam Robinson shared for a browse abandonment flow could be as simple as ONE emoji: đź‘€
It could route users back to the cart.
It could help customers initiate conversations with your customer experience team.
Marketing is all about attention grabbing as a first step. This one emoji text is something unique that make you stand out in a crowd, sets you apart from other text in the inbox.
Before we end this case study, we want to highlight one more thing:
Not every cart is recoverable.
Baymard.com research also found that 58.6% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart within the last 3 months because “I was just browsing / not ready to buy”.
