Customer abandoned shopping cart. Now what?

A recent study by Experian found that online shopping carts are abandoned at an alarmingly high rate of 56.2 percent! This means that the site visitor placed item in the shopping cart but left the site and did not complete the purchase. 56.2 percent is a lot of potential business to lose!

Two things that your online business should do is check when the customers abandoned their cart and follow up with a marketing email.

We design E-commerce websites that allow business owners to check and see when customers have abandoned their shopping cart. Some guesswork is involved and the information is not black and white but here are a couple of scenarios. If the customer places one item in the cart and abandons after a few minutes they may be searching other websites to compare. You know your product best so you have to make the call. Maybe you're not competitive with your pricing? Look at your competitors and see what is being offered. The price may not be the only thing the customer is comparing. Are they looking at the warranty information or service provided along with the product?

The other thing you want to see is if the customer leaves the cart after adding additional product. Are they adding accessories or items that work in conjunction with another item in the cart? If they are abandoning the cart in that case it could be that the add-ons are inflating the price too much. Or, they did not realize the expense involved because they need more than they originally thought. You can look into educating the customer before they place anything in the cart with descriptive text that explains the need and benefit for the extra items. We like to have an automatic message come up that says, "Customers who purchased this also purchased or looked at...". We also encourage bundling items together and offering them at a slight discount. If the customer is logged-in you have their email address. It is a good idea to follow up with an email and ask if they had any questions about the product they were looking at. You can make this a generic email that is sent to anyone who abandons the cart and make sure you mention that you have experience with the product or an expert who can help them. You could customize the email to point out any special offers you have or how they can save money with a bundle that they did not see when they were on your site.

There is a lot of room for closing deals when a cart is abandoned. We provide you tools but ultimately you, the site owner, knows what may entice a customer to return and consider making a purchase.

Freddy Uson is the Creative Director and owner of Uson Consulting, llc. Visit usonconsulting.com A Web Design & Creative Marketing business who offers web design, development, e-commerce, SEO and site optimization, marketing and all print collateral. Based in the Central New Jersey, Princeton, NJ area and serving all of NY/NJ. Contact us at (551) 265-8762 or email info@usonconsulting.com