Abandoned Orders Best Practices

What is an Abandoned Cart?

An abandoned cart refers to an instance where a potential shopper adds items to their basket on an eCommerce site but leaves the site without completing their purchase. The shopper has shown a high intent to purchase the product or service but hasn’t finalised their order.

Abandoned cart comms use zero and first-party data, thereby following GDPR regulations.

Why Build an Abandoned Cart Automated Campaign?

Abandoned carts represent one of the most significant missed revenue opportunities for all businesses, especially eCommerce companies. Studies show that a large portion of customers add items to their basket but leave the website without completing their purchase. Please find below the benefits of creating an automated abandoned cart program.

Abandoned Cart Reasons

There are many reasons behind abandoned carts, ranging from user experience problems to external factors. Here are some of the most common reasons:

Unexpected costs at checkout
Complicated checkout process
Account creation
Poor website or mobile experience
Security concerns
Comparison shopping
Lack of payment options
Distractions
Out of stock or limited availability
Lack of trust or negative reviews

Issues of Abandoned Carts

Abandoned carts represent a huge challenge for eCommerce companies, as they directly impact conversion rates and ultimately revenue loss. Here are some of the most common negative aspects of abandoned carts:

Revenue loss
Loss of opportunities for upselling and cross-selling
Decrease conversion rates
Negative impact on customer lifetime value
Loss of customer trust
Negative impact on data and insights

Abandoned Cart Logic

Abandoned cart email or SMS is typically scraped from the checkout page and/or can be taken from an Overlay. The first send comes up as transactional and the rest of the automated campaign comes up as marketing. The abandoned cart logic works across all platforms. The abandoned cart campaign informs shoppers that items were left in the basket but doesn’t specify the product(s).

Other Ways to Prevent Cart Abandonment

Personalised on-site experiences such as offering personalised recommendations/discounts or deals based on previous buys, tailoring messages based on previous user interactions.
Products example = exit intent Overlays or Visually Similar Search

Abandoned Cart Rates

Nearly 70% of online shopping baskets are abandoned before checkout is complete (Reference 1)
Salesfire’s research found that cart abandonment is higher on mobile devices with rates around 81% vs desktop rate of around 76%
Average open rate of abandoned cart emails is close to 41.18% (reference 2) and Salesfire’s research found that 11.92% of users who click a link in an abandoned order email go on to make a purchase.

What are the Benefits of Creating an Abandoned Cart Automated Campaign?

Recover lost revenue:

An abandoned cart recovery email and SMS journey can remind customers of their intent to purchase and encourage them to complete their transaction.

Increase customer retention:

Creates an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships by showing shoppers that you care about their shopping experience. Offer personalised incentives across channels.

Improve marketing ROI:

Money has already been invested by bringing shoppers to your website. Instead of focusing solely on new customer acquisition, you can recapture lost opportunities with automated cart comms.
Saves time by setting up an automated program instead of manually sending comms across channels. Provides regular ROI.

Improved customer insights:

Analysing the tailored messages across channels allows you to look at potential barriers or issues in your sales process. Using real-time data allows you to improve your website, potential pricing strategy or selected product pages.
Creating tailored messages across channels using automation based on the customer’s shopping behaviour makes the message more relevant.

Increased cart value:

Cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Apart from the abandoned cart items, you can recommend complementary products based on what the shopper has added to their basket.

What are the Steps to Build an Effective Abandoned Cart Campaign?

Set trigger points:

Abandonment thresholds: Define the conditions that trigger your automated abandoned cart flow. E.g. the basket value amount/time of the day.
Tracking: Ensure the tracking is set correctly for links that are pushed across channels.

Create a multi-channel flow:

Abandon cart ROI tends to be higher on multi-channel comms vs single comms (Reference 3)
Ensure that the messaging across all channels matches the brand tone of voice and is consistent. Optimise messaging for each platform.

Message personalisation:

Use customised incentives/promotions. If a shopper has a more expensive ‘basket value’ offer a more significant discount/incentive in one flow.
For smaller/less expensive ‘basket’ value then a smaller discount/incentive can be offered on a separate flow.

Design across channels:

Mobile responsive design. Ensure that emails, SMS, and LPS render well across all devices.

Optimise timing:

Test and refine timing.
Create time-sensitive promotional offers. Create a sense of urgency and encourage the customer to act quickly before they lose out on the offer.
Larger/more expensive items may also require more consideration than smaller less expensive items.

Create a seamless and easy checkout process:

Minimise the number of steps during the purchase process.
Allow guest checkout/not creating an account and offer multiple payment options

Use social proof and urgency messaging:

Social proof examples could be testimonials, reviews, etc
Create a sense of urgency/show trending products

Track metrics:

Constantly monitor metrics across channels.
Regularly optimise automated programs based on metrics. Only make one minor modification at each time to understand what has worked/what hasn’t worked.

Help Centre