Attracting customers to your online store is one thing; getting them to stay long enough to make a purchase is another! The last thing you want is for a customer to put an item in their cart, then click away from your store. This is a major problem for online stores of all sizes – it represents a failure of your conversion funnel since a prospective customer wasn’t engaged enough to complete a purchase.
While cart abandonment rates for D2C (DTC) companies are high, there are cart abandonment solutions that will help minimize your online store’s cart abandonment rate.
Let’s take a look at how you can do that in detail.
Three key reasons for cart abandonment
According to statistics from the Baymard Institute, the cart abandonment rate averages around 70%. In other words, about seven out of every ten e-commerce shoppers will not complete a transaction on an average store. That’s not great news for online store owners.
There are three primary reasons why shoppers do this:
- Poor customer experience: They had an unsatisfactory user experience on your website or online store. For example, maybe they couldn’t find shipping, returns, or refund policies.
- Complex navigation: Alternatively, perhaps your online store insists customers to make an account before checking out, which further complicates the process.
- Window shoppers: Some online shoppers put things in their carts without intending to purchase them. They’re “just looking” and are akin to the window shoppers of retail stores.
- Wrong audience: Visitors to your site might simply belong to the wrong target audience. They would have either reached your site by mistake which could be because of imprecise marketing. In either case, they are likely to bounce off without making a purchase – as they are unlikely to find what product is relevant to their needs.
Six cart abandonment solutions that work for D2C e-commerce stores
Now that you know why shoppers abandon their carts, let’s look at practical ways to reduce and recover your cart abandonment rate on your online store.
Of course, you can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all cart abandonment solution. You need to research and experiment to discover what methods your unique customers are likely to respond to.
That’s where Freshmarketer comes in. This unique solution offers tons of features to reduce abandoned cart rates for your e-commerce business.
1. Multichannel engagement to nudge customers to their carts
Multichannel engagement means connecting with your site visitors in more than one way. Here are a few examples:
- Intuitive chat messages can share discount coupons to new site visitors
- Email marketing can encourage repeat customers with product recommendations
- SMS and WhatsApp marketing can share special deals with customers who haven’t purchased from you in a while
With the help of an abandoned cart email template or text message, you can have it ready to go whenever you need it.
Make sure to send multichannel engagement messages at the right time: ideally, right after customers click away from your shop or when they’re about to (you’ll know that based on their cursor position). However, send the multichannel marketing messages a few hours after the cart abandonment event. After all, no one likes to feel pestered by an e-commerce brand or that they have to respond to stop getting advertisements!
Next, you can reduce the abandoned cart rate on your site through live chat support. It lets you engage your customers, provide quick solutions to pain points, and help guide people to the checkout page.
Ensure you optimize your website for mobile users. Mobile optimized sites are important since about half of all Internet traffic comes from mobile visitors these days. The easier your site is to use and purchase on mobile devices, the higher cash revenue you’ll see.
Lastly, don’t stop engaging with “window shoppers,” even if they don’t seem committed to purchasing just yet. Keep engaging with them and building consumer connections; the more you do this, the more likely they will convert into paying customers.
2. Workflows to automate cart abandonment reminders
Automated workflows have an ancillary benefit: they free up extra time you can use for other aspects of your business.
Freshmarketer allows you to automate workflows to help set up and define customer journeys.
For instance, say that a product has been in a customer’s cart for six hours. With Freshmarketer’s automatic workflows, your online store can automatically send an email or WhatsApp message to the customer, encouraging them to finish their purchase. This tool can also be used for other strategies, including multichannel marketing, automating discounts and product recommendations messages, and more.
3. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to plug the leaky holes in customers’ checkout process
CRO allows you to determine the best way to leverage your marketing and web store tools and maximize your conversion rate. Say that you have a standard conversion rate of 2 to 5% (which is pretty average across industries). However, you believe that you can optimize that conversion rate to get up to as high as 8%.
With the right CRO tools, you can bump up your conversion numbers. That means every dollar you spend on marketing or web design makes you more money in aggregate.
Freshmarketer’s CRO tools allow you to analyze visitors’ browsing behavior with
- Heatmaps to see which areas of your store perform best and worst
- Scroll maps to identify where more visitors drop from your site
- Replay user sessions to see how individuals interact across your site
This helps you understand the customer journey on your website and derive which part of the checkout process most of the customers drop out. Armed with this information, you can make critical improvements to your checkout page and online store.
4. Live chat for instant and intuitive support
Often, customers do not complete their purchase when they are unable to find answers in the product description or FAQs section.
Offering a live chat or chatbots on your online store is a great way to nudge customers towards checkout as chatbots can
- Automatically answer FAQs, give consumers product recommendations, and direct them to relevant pages, including a line directly to you
- Connect with inactive customers and remind them to take action towards check out
Chatbots are great for preventing people from clicking away from your site due to a perceived lack of attention. Put simply, chatbots give visitors a level of interactivity beyond what’s possible with a small live customer service team.
5. Visitor segmentation to deliver personalized messages to cart abandoners
Take personalization to the next level by segmenting your customers into discrete groups. You can send specific messages and discounts to certain individuals, improving your targeted marketing efforts. You can target high-value customers who’ve abandoned their carts for specific campaigns or use different marketing methods for these customers.
Freshmarketer’s segmentation lets you divide visitors according to behavior, demographics, and other categories, including those customers who’ve abandoned their carts.
Even more importantly, Freshmarketer’s segmentation tools allow you to personalize campaigns. Customers love personalized emails and other marketing materials; they feel spoken to and seen by brands just like you. With more personalization, each discount, ad, or email you send out will have a better chance of resulting in conversion and netting you a long-term customer.
6. Web forms to engage with first-time customers
While you can get in touch with repeat customers about their abandoned carts, reminding first-time visitors who have not shared their contact information is a challenge.
One way you could solve this is by using web forms. Web form tools are important whenever you need to get site visitors to sign up for something, whether it’s for a store account or an email newsletter. By providing discount coupons or store credits in exchange for their contact information, you can nurture your website visitors into repeat customers.
But many customers are averse to filling out web forms. Many web forms take too long to fill out, seem too complicated, or don’t offer enough value for their effort. Web form tools that streamline the process or that make it fun for visitors to provide their information oftentimes result in better conversions and better customer satisfaction.
You can simplify brand memberships, email newsletters, text-to-pay services, and other sign-ups through Freshmarketer’s optimized web forms. With these web forms, you’ll make it easier than ever for customers to sign up for what you need them to. At the same time, you’ll drive engagement and incentivize purchases by offering discounts, special deals, etc.
Takeaways
With cart abandonment being a pressing problem for D2C e-commerce owners, cart abandonment solutions help you turn those abandoned carts into sales. It enables you to automate engagement with your customers, guide them through the sales funnels and provide enhanced visibility into consumer behaviors.
Why wait? Check out Freshmarketer today and see how it can help your e-commerce store thrive in the modern market!
