Ecommerce Mania | EyeT Innovations

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How to limit cart abandonment and how abandoned cart mail are beneficial
Overview

Online commerce is booming with the rise of internet penetration, ease of logistics and smartphones. Due to extremely high competition and ever-changing market dynamics, e-commerce businesses have to constantly innovate at every level to remain relevant. Growing brand awareness, selling, customer engagement, shipping, complaint redressal etc will determine the long term success of your business. One of the leading issues faced by e-commerce website owners is card abandonment. we will check out how the monster of an issue can be tamed by implementing a cheap and efficient abandoned cart mail strategy.

What is cart abandonment?

Every visitor to your online store is a potential customer and business owners should try to convert all of them into sales. Unfortunately, a lot of customers that visit your website may be visiting with no intention of buying, they may simply be engaging in online window shopping. For them, you should showcase the presence of your brand or Quality/utility of your product in case they intend to buy something in a foreseeable future. A lot of your other potential customers are impressed by your product offering or service and are on the verge of buying by adding it into the cart but shy away just before completing the transaction. This shows the proclivity of the user towards your product even though it doesn’t end in a sale. That means the product is abandoned in the cart before completion of the transaction, hence the name cart abandonment.

“76 % of all products are abandoned at cart and are rising. Businesses lose $4.6 trillion of potential business every year”

Loss due to cart abandonment

Great products, targeted marketing effort and efficient SEO targeting may be bringing you huge virtual footfalls to your e-commerce website. Out of these, you may be converting a huge set of potential customers into a satisfied customer generating revenue and profits. But some still intend to buy your products from your e-commerce website, eventually adding your product to their cart but not proceeding with the transaction at check out. Cart abandonment at check out is a growing problem faced by many e-commerce business owners. This results in a loss of revenue and gives a low return on investment on your marketing and advertising expenses. It doesn’t matter how many unique visitors you are driving into your website through an advertisement, social media ads or simply through organic means, if they are abandoning their cart before transaction there is a problem to be addressed.

Why is the cart abandoned?

Imagine going to your nearby supermarket, adding your grocery to cart, while you are about to pay the cashier, you watch a funny cat video your best friend sent and you leave your cart in the middle and proceed towards watching your favourite sitcom holding a bottle of beer. Well, it’s an unlikely scenario in real life but in a virtual world, it happens all the time. call, message, notification, your spouse’s greeting or sending an important mail, you are about to miss the deadline. All of them can distract a user from completing the transaction.

• Trustworthiness of your website or business: if your website or domain is not professional enough or looks dubious, there are chances that the customer will never trust you with his/her hard-earned money. We have all heard of online scams where one’s product does not arrive or credit card/ personal information gets leaked to the third party. This is potentially dangerous to the customer and even the slightest suspicion will make your user think twice before buying a product from you. To overcome this, store owners need to build their estore better and install the required certificates to enable the financial transaction. the potential customer may browse through your website, adding products to cart but may turn suspicious when it comes to providing financial details while transacting.
• Mandatory account creation: sometimes the user is not a regular and is interested in purchasing for once. Asking those potential users to create an account and provide all the mandatory information is inconvenient. These customers may lose interest since the account creates a few minutes enough to lose your enthusiasm to complete your purchase resulting in cart abandonment.
• Complicated/long checkout process is extremely tedious to a consumer. Long and confusing checkouts can make customers disinterested/disinterested in your product. The business owner should always try to build a store which provides a seamless experience for the end-user. navigation through the e-store is hassle-free resulting
• Extra Cost in the form of shipping, tax or fees is one of the biggest causes of cart abandonment. It is always better to be upfront about the cost with your customer. Once the customer is convinced himself/herself that he/she is paying x dollars for a product, any additional money seems like an overburden and sometimes it may even feel like cheating leading to dissatisfaction among potential customers. E-commerce business owners should always try to be as transparent about the whole process, shipment, transaction and even return policy.
• There isn’t any remedy for the impatience caused by waiting for package delivery. Waiting to see how your new skirt looks on you can sometimes feel like an eternity. Long delivery time can be one of the biggest discouraging factors behind cart abandonment, which even makes e-commerce stores compete against brick and mortar stores for the same sale.
• Buying anything virtually has its own merits and demerits, while it’s convenient but a customer may have to contend with the feeling of not being able to touch and feel the product. There is always a possibility that a customer would find a product not satisfactory and intend to return it. The hassle-free return policy is one of the biggest reasons why people abandoned their cart.
• Customers visiting your websites can have different methods of payment (credit card, digital wallet etc). if users are not provided with their preferred and convenient way of the transaction they may end up abandoning their product at cart and take their business elsewhere.

How to limit cart abandonment?

Establish trust with your customer using secure domains and using certificates mandated for financial transactions. Adding user-generated reviews can also help. The trust factor of an unknown website increases dramatically in perception when a user sees a logo that he is familiar with, usually related to financial security.

• Navigating to the transaction page should be in just a few clicks. The smaller the clicks required, the easier it is to navigate and complete the transaction. with so many distractions around it is possible for a user to get lost in the website and hence lose interest altogether.
• Include progress indicator and a thumbnail image of the product in the check out page. Most users are not going to forget what they are buying (unless they are on a shopping spree) but progress indicator and product image on the check out page reassures the user of what they are buying and what are the next steps required.
• Offer users checkout offers and coupons if possible. time-bound offers can bring a sense of urgency in the customer and hence the conversion into sales.
• Optimise your page loading time. E-commerce sales conversion drops over 7 % for every second delay in page loading. high-speed internet and lack of patience may a user switch to something else, eventually losing interest and hence dropping the idea of purchasing altogether.
• Be precise about what you are offering and what are the additional charges that will occur like taxes and shipping. If there is a huge difference between the price of the product and eventual price while paying, there is a possibility that a customer might feel cheated. Being transparent along the whole journey with the user is one of the best ways of creating a long-lasting relationship and avoiding cart abandonment.
• Hassle-free shipping and return can instil confidence In user. It’s like you giving assurance to alleviate the fear that if anything goes wrong there is always an option of you returning the product and getting your money back.
• Use cart abandonment mail to remarket to users. This is one of the most used and sought after methods in e-commerce. Target bay is one of the leading email-based marketing services helping you with your card abandonment mail strategy.

What is cart abandonment mail?

Abandoned cart mail is the automated follow-up mail sent by the e-store to someone who has added products to the cart, reached the checkout page and left without completing the transaction. The mail reminds the customer to proceed with the transaction. They can also be used to entice the customer to buy the product using various offers or coupons and rewards to increase the value proposition. Sometimes they remind customers that to avail the existing offers they have to buy the product before the offer ends.

“With an efficient cart abandonment strategy, you can recover up to 33% of your lost business.”

How beneficial are abandoned cart mail for your e-commerce store?

Cheap, efficient and reliable: abandoned cart mail reminds the customer of your presence. In an online world where people are bombarded with information, advertisement and opinions it is extremely difficult being relevant and convey your information through all the noise. An efficiently, well-planned abandoned cart mail strategy has the potential to bring around $8 of revenue per mail sent. Revenue per email of an abandoned cart email far outweighs promotional emails.

• They improve customer relationships by re-engaging with the users. personalising the email and product recommendations can help you to build better engagement with the user. This can alleviate your brand image making it useful and relevant.
• You can also introduce new products along the line of the product in their cart to entice the customer to check it out, generating traffic and eventually a conversion.
• Loyalty and reward points are one of the best ways to be included in your mail. Even though it can reduce the revenue potential, it is something to try as the last resort. The airline industry is the best example of how rewards or airline miles help in enticing the customer to choose with them others by rewarding them with air miles.
• The main purpose of the mail is to fight the indecisiveness of the users and push them just enough to make go through the sale route.

Conclusion

converting a visitor on your website into a customer may be a daunting task which could get expensive if the visitor didn’t come from an organic route i.e through advertisement, Social media campaign etc. whereas converting a visitor who abandoned his/her cart is much easier as it takes just a small nudge in your way by using a targeted abandoned cart mail strategy. Choose your mailing strategy astutely and see your sales/revenue/conversion growing.