May 11, 2023 | 5 minute read As an online business owner, you know how important it is to convert visitors into customers. However, what happens when visitors add items to their cart but don’t complete the purchase? This is known as an abandoned shopping cart, which can hurt your business in multiple ways. In this article, I will review the best practices for addressing abandoned shopping carts and outline how Visual Visitor’s +Person product can help, so you can minimize their impact and increase your sales.
Introduction to Abandoned Shopping Carts
Before we dive into the best practices for addressing abandoned shopping carts, let’s first define what they are. An abandoned shopping cart is when visitors add items to their cart but do not complete the purchase. Instead, they leave the website without finalizing the transaction. This can be frustrating for business owners as it represents a lost opportunity for revenue.
Understanding the Impact of Abandoned Shopping Carts
The impact of abandoned shopping carts can be significant. First and foremost, it represents lost revenue for your business. According to a study by Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.57%. That means for every 100 visitors who add items to their cart, only 30 complete the purchase. This can add up to a significant amount of lost revenue over time.
In addition to lost revenue, abandoned shopping carts can also have a negative impact on your conversion rate. When visitors see that others are not completing purchases, they may hesitate to do so themselves. This can create a negative cycle that leads to even more abandoned shopping carts.
Reasons for Abandoned Shopping Carts
There are many reasons why visitors may abandon their shopping carts. One of the most common is unexpected costs, such as shipping or taxes. Visitors may also abandon their carts due to a complicated checkout process, concerns about security, or simply being distracted and forgetting to complete the purchase.
Visual Visitor’s +Person product allows you to reimagine your cart abandonment solution to reach checkout and cart abandoners. Keep reading to learn more.
Best Practices to Address Abandoned Shopping Carts
Now that we understand the impact and reasons for abandoned shopping carts, let’s discuss the best practices for addressing this issue.
Optimize Your Checkout Process
Optimizing your checkout process is one of the most effective ways to reduce abandoned shopping carts. This means making the process as simple and straightforward as possible. Some tips for optimizing your checkout process include:
- Offering guest checkout options
- Minimizing the number of steps required to complete the purchase
- Including progress indicators so visitors can see how far along they are in the process
- Providing clear information about shipping costs and delivery times
- Allowing visitors to edit their cart at any time during the checkout process
Optimizing your checkout process can reduce the likelihood of visitors abandoning their shopping carts.
Use Email Retargeting Campaigns
Another effective way to address abandoned shopping carts is to use email retargeting campaigns. This involves sending follow-up emails to visitors who have abandoned their carts, reminding them of the items they left behind and encouraging them to complete the purchase. Some tips for effective email retargeting campaigns include:
- Sending the first email within 24 hours of the abandoned cart
- Including images and descriptions of the abandoned items in the email
- Offering incentives, such as free shipping or a discount code, to encourage the visitor to complete the purchase
- Including a clear call-to-action button that takes the visitor directly to their cart
By using email retargeting campaigns, you can remind visitors of the items in their cart and encourage them to complete the purchase.
Does your business currently have a method for identifying those visitors and obtaining their email addresses? Visual Visitor’s +Person has that ability. Keep reading to learn more.
Offer Incentives and Discounts
Another way to address abandoned shopping carts is to offer incentives and discounts. This can be done through email retargeting campaigns or through exit-intent pop-ups (which we will discuss in the next section). Some tips for effective incentives and discounts include:
- Offering a percentage or dollar amount off the total purchase price
- Offering free shipping or a free gift with purchase
- Setting a time limit on the offer to create a sense of urgency
- Making the offer easy to redeem by including a discount code or link in the email or pop-up
By offering incentives and discounts, you can encourage visitors to complete their purchases and reduce the likelihood of abandoned shopping carts.
Implement Exit-Intent Pop-ups
Another effective way to address abandoned shopping carts is to implement exit-intent pop-ups. These pop-ups appear when a visitor is about to leave your website, reminding them of the items in their cart and offering incentives or discounts to encourage them to complete the purchase. Some tips for effective exit-intent pop-ups include:
- Making the pop-up visually appealing and attention-grabbing
- Offering clear incentives or discounts to encourage the visitor to complete the purchase
- Including a clear call-to-action button that takes the visitor directly to their cart
- Making the pop-up easy to dismiss if the visitor is not interested
By implementing exit-intent pop-ups, you can remind visitors of the items in their cart and encourage them to complete the purchase before leaving your website.
Analyzing and Tracking Abandoned Shopping Carts
Finally, it’s important to analyze and track abandoned shopping carts to identify patterns and trends. This can help you identify areas of your website or checkout process that may be causing visitors to abandon their carts. Some tips for analyzing and tracking abandoned shopping carts include:
- Analyzing the reasons for abandoned shopping carts, such as unexpected costs or a complicated checkout process
- Making changes to your website and checkout process based on the data you collect
- Continuing to monitor and analyze cart abandonment rates to ensure your changes are effective
By analyzing and tracking abandoned shopping carts, you can identify areas for improvement and make changes to reduce cart abandonment rates over time.
+Person from Visual Visitor
+Person works hand in hand with most e-commerce platforms. We use our multibillion-record customer contact database and website identification services to help you recover that shopper and retain their interest. Our +Person product can tell you what you need to know about your visitor and how to reconnect with them. How do we do it? We identify the shopper, First Name, Last Name, email address, and up to 37 other data points of those anonymous shoppers that are already trying to engage with your business. And we do it Real-time by capturing the data you need before and after checkout.
Visual Visitor has the features you will need to recover lost shoppers. You will learn more about the customers that browse your site and those that purchase from you. We go beyond helping you recover the shoppers that have abandoned their carts and left your site. We provide the data you need to build relationships with your customers.
What sets us apart from the competition is that we don’t focus on logged-in users. We also provide you with information to reach those warm leads that haven’t put items in their cart yet. Our product is focused on providing you with information through all stages of the customer buying cycle. Knowledge is power; the more you know about the shoppers visiting your site, the better.
With customer data from awareness to purchase, you can build your customer base and grow your business. Use this data to build email campaigns of warm leads, send out price drop alerts, recover lost sales, and retain past customers.
Conclusion and Next Steps
In conclusion, abandoned shopping carts can be a significant issue for online businesses. However, by implementing the best practices outlined in this article and using a powerful tool like Visual Visitor’s +Person for shopper identification, you can minimize the impact of abandoned shopping carts and increase your sales.
Now that you have these best practices, it’s time to take action. Review your website and checkout process to identify areas for improvement, and start implementing these best practices today. Doing so can improve your conversion rates and increase your revenue.
In business, nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity... Or a bad cart abandonment solution.
Try Visual Visitor's +Person Now
Still Not Sure?
We understand that many other companies offer bits and pieces of our Sales Intelligence Platform. When it comes right down to it, Visual Visitor has all the features you need in one place. Offered at a price you can afford. If you want to go beyond the standard IP Sourcing offered to reduce cart abandonment, try Visual Visitor’s +Person. What do you have to lose with our fully functional 14-day free trial?
