Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a customer wants to check out and completes all of the forms on a site but then backs out before paying for any products. This happens so often enough that companies need to take steps to alleviate this issue so as not to lose business. One study by Genesys found that:
- None of the retailers they surveyed had a click-to-chat feature.
- An abysmal 22% of them send follow-up emails within 24 hours, if at all.
- A whopping 78% don’t contact the customer after cart abandonment.
- In 70% of cases, retailers did not recognise that the customer had created an account.
The reasons that cause a shopper to abandon an online cart can vary, but you still have ways at your disposal to gain more insight into their web-related behaviour and actively pursue them.
What your e-commerce site needs
E-commerce projects are often high-stakes games that are part luck, fate and skill. We’ve boiled down the strategy for anyone willing to listen into two simple elements:
External and internal email workflows
Use custom emails that follow your customers as soon as they abandon their carts and get redirected to a page specifically catered to them. These emails will help you achieve the ultimate goal of increasing sales.
Michael Cloutman, a content manager at Koola, says: “The external emails sent to the user should be for remarketing purposes. They remind the customer about the products they still have in their basket. Some marketing elements that can be used to convince the user to buy could be a promotion of 10% off or free delivery.”
Maybe the online customer became distracted before checking out and did not finish their purchase. Sending a reminder can only help improve conversion because people sometimes need a second (or third!) chance to take action in these situations.
Chatbots
Chatbots can remind shoppers about their shopping carts while they are online. Chatbots have been found to have a more natural interaction with customers instead of automated emails that are seen as intrusive.
Chatbots provide a reassuring presence on your site, reminding shoppers not to abandon their carts and bring them back to complete their transactions.
The importance of a database
A well-structured database can be used as a reference point for salespeople to contact abandoners. Take it one step further by creating categories to keep track of your contact information, such as first-time abandoners and repeat abandoners, if you maintain any of that sort of data. This helps your sales team to know exactly how to approach a customer.
“Your marketing efforts got the user on the site to take action in adding items to a basket, but something prevented them from completing the transaction,” says Michael.
“So don't lose a customer as it’s more expensive to capture a new customer than it is to keep the ones already made. Koola can help close that fall-off rate and get the customers buying.”
This is a lot to take on in addition to pushing sales. That’s why you have Koola Digital. We want the best for your online business, so get in touch to learn what we can do to help your e-commerce website succeed.
