We often see that one of the biggest obstacles online retailers face is visitor abandonment.  A great deal of money and effort has been spent bringing prospects to a site.  But then a large portion of those visitors just abandon.  Many never to return again.

We saw an average cart abandonment rate of 71.39% in 2015.  Mobile phone abandonment rates reached 76.99%.  That means that nearly 3/4ths of the shopping carts that are carrying items and were supposed to end in a transaction – but did not.  That’s a lot of false hope for online retailers.  

But there really is hope in capturing the business of those who abandon.

There are multiple avenues to regain prospects and turn them into paying customers.  And many of those cart abandonment solutions are seeing great results.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective BEFORE Visitors Abandon

One effective strategy is to keep visitors from abandoning in the first place.  Here are a few ways that Barilliance allows businesses to effectively do that.

1.Exit Intent

Exit intent is one of the cart abandonment solutions that typically sees a 10% conversion rate in recapturing visitors interest at exactly the point when they are about to abandon the site.  And that’s just the average.  Some instance of exit intent have seen conversions as high as 100%.

Here’s how exit intent works:  As visitors move their cursors around a site, technology tracks those movements and predicts when visitors are about to abandon in accordance to where they move those cursors.  This is usually when a visitor moves their mouse to the address bar where they might be getting ready to type another website address or the back button where they might be going back to a previous website.

At that very critical moment where it’s detected that they might be permanently abandoning, a last moment incentive is presented to the visitor in an attempt to bring them back on-board.  With this last minute display, merchants can remind shoppers that they still have a full shopping cart – in case they forgot.  They can also offer a special discount to further push their shoppers to complete the order.

Below is an example of a last moment incentive that was used by one of our customers.

2. Send My Cart

Barilliance also allows businesses to let their visitors send themselves an email of their cart contents before they actually leave the site.  This is convenient in the event that they did not previously leave an email address.

3. Perpetual Shopping Carts

As mentioned, sometimes visitors just forget that they have items in their cart.  One way to remind shoppers that their cart is full is to display a perpetual shopping cart so visitors are always aware that their shopping cart has items in it.

Below is an example of how Jabong displays a perpetual cart that keeps cart contents visible.

This is one of the cart abandonment solutions that is very effective but is not used nearly enough.

MarketingSherpa reports that only 38% of websites were using perpetual shopping carts.  And as you can see below, 64% of those websites considered them to be very effective.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective When Visitors Decide To Return To Their Cart

Not every shopper is operating on your timeline of adding an item to cart and then completing that transaction immediately.  Here’s how businesses can regain customer interest when shoppers decide they are ready to come back and complete the transaction.

4. Persistent Cookies

Another one of the cart abandonment solutions that many online retailers are not fully utilizing is the use of persistent cookies.

So what are persistent cookies?  Well, they keep contents in a shopping cart for an extended period of time.

Have you ever added items to a cart and then went back to the site a few days later to complete the transaction – but the items were gone?  

Unfortunately, this happens more often than you think.  And online retailers really need to think about why this is detrimental to their bottom line.  Think about it.  Sometimes shoppers just get busy.  they throw an item into the cart and then the phone rings, or dinner is ready, or junior needs a diaper change.   Life happens and shoppers are forced to come back later to complete their transaction.

In fact, according to Emarketer, 56% percent of visitors intend to save their cart for later.

Online retailers may feel that a large portion of their shoppers are abandoning their carts.  However, they’re really just choosing to complete their orders at their own convenience.

Here’s a look at how a study by Scanalert revealed the timeline in which over 8 million consumers were choosing to come back to their carts.

The study showed that 28% of shoppers took more than a day to complete their transaction, 21% of shoppers took more than 3 days and 4% came back more than 2 weeks later.

This is great data that shows how important it really is for online retailers to set their persistent cookies for as long as possible to ensure that visitors items will still be in their cart when they come back.

Unfortunately, data is showing that not everyone is using persistent cookies as one of their cart abandonment solutions.

The pie chart below shows how W3Tech analyzes the technology usage of Alexa’s “Top 10 Million” ranked websites.

Data shows how many websites are using persistent cookies.

Here you can see that 80% of websites were not using persistent cookies.  Out of the 20% that were, 32.6% used cookies that expire in hours and 31.7 used cookies that expired in days.

According to these statistics, only 7% of websites were equipped to keep customer shopping carts intact for shoppers who opt to come back to their carts after 1 week to complete their transaction.  That’s a very small piece of the pie.

Another troublesome aspect of persistent cookies is that some websites require you to register an account in order for persistent cookies to be activated and shopping cart contents saved.

This is troublesome because there are a great number of online shoppers who do not want to register an account but would rather make their purchase as a guest.

5. Welcome Back Messages

And when those visitors do return to your website at their own convenience – Barilliance helps you to welcome them back with a reminder message.  Remind them that you’ve saved the items in their cart.

Cart Abandonment Solutions That Are Effective In Bringing Shoppers Back To their Carts

Now what do you do when your visitors have officially abandoned and you are losing all hope that they’ll complete their purchase?  Bring them back.

6. Shopping Cart Email Reminders

Reminding abandoned visitors that they’ve left items in their shopping carts is another one of many highly effective cart abandonment solutions.  And Barilliance let’s you do this with ease.

It’s a simple strategy really.  Once a visitor abandons their cart simply send an email to remind them that there are still items in their cart.

The best method is to test timed emails to gauge effectiveness.  A Barilliance study found that the best converting email campaigns consist of three triggered emails sent out at intervals of within 1 hour, 24 hours and 72 hours after cart  abandonment.   More than three emails can feel like an annoyance to some abandoned shoppers.

Often as more emails are sent, a more appealing offer is made.  This could be an increased discount at each email interval.

The important thing to remember here is to capture the shoppers email address early on in the checkout process so that you are able to send an email reminder.  If it’s one of the first few form fields, you can obtain it even if they drop out of the form at any point thereafter.

Conclusion

So there you see there are multiple cart abandonment solutions that are highly effective in recapturing the interest of abandoned shoppers.

Be sure to use strategies that keep them from abandoning in the first place.  Second, make sure their carts are still intact when they decide they are ready to come back and complete their transaction.  And finally, don’t be afraid to reach out and remind shoppers that their shopping carts are full.  

You’ve spent a great deal of money and time to bring in prospects.  All hope is not lost when they abandon.  With all of these strategies in place, it has been shown that you can recapture a good portion of that abandoned revenue.