The abandonment of the cart is a major issue around the world for eCommerce sectors. And it is a big challenge for any eCommerce store owner how they should reduce and recover abandoned carts. As per the Baymard survey, the global cart abandonment rate stands at 69.57%. This is a huge statistic to consider.
One of the largest eCommerce platforms, Magento, which powers more than 250,000 websites across the globe also struggles with the same issue. If you are one of the merchants using Magento, then let me tell you that you are not alone here. This is one major issue every eCommerce owners have to face at one point of time in their successful business run. But with the right approach and strategy, you can turn those abandoned carts into sales. With this guide, we will uncover some best practices you can follow to recover abandon carts. But first, let’s understand.
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Cart abandonment simply means that your customers have an interest in buying some products from your store. They add products into the cart and before completing the checkout, they suddenly leave your store, with the product still in the cart. If your cart abandonment is high that means the conversion rate is low. Because customers are not provided with what they want. And what they want becomes the reason for cart abandonment.
To solve any problem, we need to know the reasons what created the problem in the first place. In this case, to know how to recover abandoned carts, we are looking for reasons customers abandon their carts. Baymard’s research on the US adults found that 58.6% of shoppers abandon their cart because they are only there for browsing or are not ready to buy yet. They abandon their cart without even initiating the checkout process. Let’s look past these just browsing shoppers, the other reasons consumers abandon their carts are as below.
As per this research, the biggest reason for cart abandonment is too high extra costs (shipping, taxes, fees) among others. Though all of these reasons are very important and we need to find a solution for each one. But focusing on improving Magento usability checkout issues you can increase conversion rate by up to 35%, which can recover $260 billion in sales.
In this guide, we will explain best practices to implement in your Magento store even before carts get abandoned. Also, we will discuss what you can do to recover lost buyers who abandoned their carts as well.
Magento, by default, allows table rate shipping, flat rate shipping, free shipping, Magneto shipping, and dimensional weight shipping methods. Out of all these, free shipping is the best method you should implement to ensure that the cart abandonment rate stays low for your store. How? Well, shipping and other extra charges are the reason cart abandonment is high.
So, implementing free shipping will lower the overall cost of the product customers have to pay. Also, you can set up a minimum value of the order to be eligible for free shipping. This way, your consumers would get motivated to buy more stuff so that they can be eligible for free shipping. This turns into a complete sale without the cart getting abandoned.
Among others, “The site wanted me to create an account” and “Too long/complicated checkout process” are the two biggest reasons people abandon their cart. Allowing your customers to checkout as a guest could increase your conversions and lower your cart abandonment rate. If it’s necessary for you that customers should create an account, then explain to them why. Show them the benefits of doing so. Also, you can offer a coupon or discount on their next purchase to lure them to make the purchase now.
An ideal checkout process should consist only 7-8 form fields. But in actual, Baymard’s benchmark data reveal that the average checkout process consists of around 14 form fields. And as a result, 1 out of 5 shoppers abandon their carts due to the long and complicated checkout process. But it is possible to limit form fields for only necessary data which needed to complete the checkout. To do that you can hire a Magento developer as well. A skilled developer will make the checkout process simple for customers.
Also, limit the checkout steps between 3-4, or you can implement one step checkout. Here, you would have to do some A/B testing to see which works best for your store. But one thing is sure that it will lower the cart abandonment rate for your Magento store.
Things like payment methods, return policies, secure connections and others contribute to the user experience of your Magento store. Also, they do affect the sales and may increase the cart abandonment rate if not optimized properly. If you want to stop that from happening, then you should know what to do. Well, integrate known payment gateways like PayPal and stripe, which customers can trust.
Also, provide multiple options for payment because when one option fails, another can take over. This way your customers won’t abandon their cart even if the payment gets declined. Write clear and concise return policies your customers can understand and satisfy themselves. Another thing you can do is to make your Magento site secure with an SSL certificate. Doing all these things will surely increase your store’s user experience and reduce the rate of cart abandonment.
As mentioned, too high extra cost at the checkout makes customers abandon their cart. One way to combat it is by offering free shipping. But since you don’t want to opt for free shipping, then here’s what you can do. Show all those extra costs to your customers on the product page itself. This way, your customers will be aware of all the extra costs even before they add an item to the cart. This would reduce the chances of carts getting abandoned.
Remarketing means marketing those customers who have already been to your site and made some actions like adding product to cart. It is an effective technique to bring back the lost buyers to your Magento store. Remarketing with visual ads reminds customers that they have a product to purchase. These display ads work best when you don’t have emails of customers who have abandoned the cart.
With the help of Google ads or similar ads network, you can remarket the same product to those customers who have abandoned it in the cart. This is an effective tactic to combat the cart abandonment rate and recover abandoned carts in your website. Another benefit of running these ads is that you don’t need any advanced marketing skills.
Once any customer abandons a cart, you can send them notification through various channels like email, SMS, push notification, and others. All of these are effective to recover abandoned carts. For email, it all depends upon the subject line. So, come up with different subject lines and do A/B test with it to find the best ones that motivate buyers to purchase. Magento 2 abandoned cart email extension will support you to notify customers of forgotten carts and offer them discount codes to checkout items instantly.
To recover abandoned carts, you can also send personalized push and SMS notifications to those buyers detailing all the benefits to lure them to purchase. But remember you have to do this in a few hours of cart getting abandoned. Because the late you respond to the situation, the more benefit your competitors will have. Also, your notification should contain urgency driven action for your customers that makes them complete their purchase.
Customers are actively looking for offers, deals or discounts on your Magento store. If they don’t find it in your store, then they might abandon the checkout process halfway. So, offering any coupon code or discount may bring back lost customers like magic. It doesn’t matter for whatever the reason they have abandoned the cart, one email, or display ad with a discount can work wonders. It is the most effective way to recover abandoned carts and bring back customers. If this doesn’t work, then I am afraid to say that nothing will work. Because promo offers are one magic element that customers want to complete their purchase.
All of these practices are easy to follow and most of them would get accomplished with specific Magento 2 extensions. Put your best efforts to it because bringing new customers might cost you more than retargeting customers who have abandoned their carts. You can also consult an eCommerce expert for any help you need on how to recover abandoned carts. An expert will explain to you the best practices to follow and how to implement them to get the best results. We are sure that you may find these practices helpful to reduce and recover the abandoned cart and increase the conversion rate.
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