Abandoned carts are a frustration every e-commerce business deals with. In 2018, 66.2% of all carts were abandoned. Customers cite a variety of reasons for abandoning their carts, from being presented with an unexpected cost to concerns about security. In many cases, they were just browsing.
The good news is data-driven marketing can reduce your abandoned cart rate. Read on to find out how.
Having your users’ email addresses enables you to send abandoned cart emails if they fail to complete their transaction. This can be done through popups triggered when a customer visits your site, through a newsletter sign-up list, or by having the email field as close as possible to the top of the checkout page.
Consider offering a popup with a discount when customers first visit your site. Many customers will enter their email to receive a discount, and then, you’ll be able to market directly to them.
While getting your user’s email addresses is important, it’s not always a good idea to force them to create an account, since some users don’t want to go through a time-consuming registration process.
Recent research showed that 37% of people abandon their carts after being asked to create an account. Providing a guest checkout option encourages such users to complete their purchases, and you can offer to save the user’s data for future shopping experiences.
Once your users have registered, storing their data makes checking out simpler and faster for them. For instance, one-click shopping can be enabled. Making the checkout process easier for the consumer gives them an incentive to complete the purchase with you.
In one survey, 21% of respondents said they had abandoned carts because the checkout process took too long or was too complicated. It’s a good idea to store data like payment methods and shipping addresses to simplify the process for your users.
An abandoned cart is an opportunity to show off your customer service. Data-driven marketing allows automation of the process. An email should be sent within 30 minutes to prompt the user to finish their purchase and provide contact information so the customer can call or email. These should, of course, be answered quickly.
Allowing customers to provide feedback helps you see where the usability problems are on your site. It also gives you the opportunity to answer questions and provide assistance before the customer shops elsewhere.
Having real-time data available also makes personalization possible. The abandoned cart email can target the user’s last activity on your site and mention the user by name. In fact, personalized emails are six times more effective than emails that are not personalized.
Offering a discount or free shipping in your abandoned cart email may prompt the user to complete the purchase. Again, using real-time data allows you to test whether such discounts prompt consumers to purchase who otherwise would not have done so.
If you are concerned about users intentionally abandoning their carts in order to receive discounts, you can set caps or use data to identify which users are abusing the system.
Real-time data and AI allow companies to analyze their customers at deeper levels than ever before. It’s no longer necessary to market the same way to all your customers. For instance, Blueshift’s 360-degree customer view tracks customer behavior across websites and mobile apps, including anonymous users.
You can now understand exactly what each individual customer is browsing and buying by category, brand, price point, etc. Blueshift also automatically computes lifetime aggregates on each customer and allows you to follow the customer’s journey across channels.
Having access to such real-time data allows you to segment your audience, market effectively to each segment, and personalize content to each individual user.
Would you like to learn more about how Blueshift can help your company reduce abandoned carts? Schedule a demo today.
