Abandoned Basket Recovery is the re-engagement and conversion of a potentially lost sale through the use of a variety of tactics. Here we look at using Email Marketing to convert a sale lost during the checkout process.
Gaining a new visitor to your website is a challenge in itself. From battling off competitors products and pricing, appearing high enough in google search to be found and pushing marketing campaigns through social media and conducting Pay Per Click through platforms such as Google and Awin.
The last thing you want is for them to then not make a purchase!
What is an Abandoned Basket?
An abandoned basket is when a potential customer fills their online shopping basket with products, but aborts before completing the transaction. Many eCommerce platforms will now report how many of your potential sales were lost to customers leaving your eCommerce store before checkout. Some can even detail which products were left.
Abandoned Basket Recovery Data
Whilst abandoned baskets do occur, it’s obviously something you would want to keep to the absolute minimum. Abandonment can often be as high as 50% on an average eCommerce website, a higher than average abandonment rate for your industry may point towards underlying issues however.
“Using a combination of tools such as Hotjar, GA4 etc can help identify problem areas within your website. Detailed abandoned basket data analysis can help identify if the problem is with a particular product or category.”
You should use this data to look at suitable changes to minimise the risk of customers bailing out at checkout. A few common examples of issues and points of friction for eCommerce shoppers include:
Poor UX
A customer’s journey needs to be simple. The ultimate goal is to get them through to checkout quickly and efficiently once the purchasing decision has been made to prevent abandoned baskets. Challenges along the way are a sure fire way of turning customers off, leaving their shopping basket filled with lost sales for your business.
Customers need to be able to find products within your website and category structure quickly. They also need to be able to easily select attributes such as size and colour easily. There’s only a limited window of opportunity to capture a sale – number of clicks and time all play a vital role in this.
Unexpected Shipping Costs
We’ve recently discussed this in our article “eCommerce Shipping Strategies”. Surprising a customer with high delivery costs at the final hurdle, can often result in abandoned shopping carts.
Not enough product details
The customer wants to purchase and they love the item. The problem lies in that:
- The materials aren’t clear enough
- The size of the item isn’t listed
- They’re not sure which colour their receiving
All these things are enough to send a customer packing, straight to a competitors ecommerce shop, where the information is clear and coherent. If there is any doubt, potential customers generally don’t want the hassle of having to go through the returns process and incur extra charges for this.
Payment Options
Believe it or not, we’ve been told by several people that if the option to Apple Pay or Google Pay isn’t available they will abandon their online shopping cart and purchase elsewhere. This is mainly down to time-saving as the payment details and delivery address is already populated. It’s a quick as a double click and a bit of face recognition!
Some customers to prefer to split their payments over monthly installments to make it more affordable. Look at finance providers such as Klarna, Clearpay and Laybuy.
Are you offering adequate and simple payment options to entice your customer to checkout?
Abandoned Basket Recovery using Email Marketing
Whilst all might seem lost, there is still hope!
Clever marketing tactics and the use of a powerful Email Marketing provider such as Klaviyo can help recover lost sales. Ecommerce research suggests that up to 10% of abandoned baskets could be recovered using this strategy!
Using Klaviyo Email Marketing and Email Automation Flows, a series of events can be triggered upon Basket Abandonment. In order to tempt customers back to your website, well timed emails can be sent, reminding them that they have “items still in their basket”. Providing quick links through to checkout, can often result in click throughs and order completion.
If this isn’t enough to convert, or your research data has shown this tactic inefficient, this is often the time to present a cheeky little discount or offer alongside the sale. If a customer has been put off due to cost or higher than expected shipping, this can often be the push to convert them.
At the point of conversion the flow splits, often sending those who have successful purchased down an “onboarding” campaign. If consented, they will continue to receive news about the company, relevant products based off their purchase history and offers. This is done in a bid to encourage additional sales and create brand loyalty.
For those who it seems are “lost” and continuing their journey down the “Abandoned Cart” flow, we can all but try. After a period of time it might be worthwhile reminding them that they had intent to buy and not to forget you in the future. At this point an increased discount may be offered, in a last attempt to convert.
eCommerce Sales Strategies with DTF Digital
Abandoned Basket Recovery is a fantastic way of attaining sales. The fact it is automated allows you to focus on other marketing elements, knowing that it is working hard for your business.
Utilise this incredible sales technique and discuss with us ways in which it can be implemented and structured into your eCommerce website. We can conduct fact finding analysis to highlight potential problematic areas through to design and implementation of abandoned cart email reminders.
