In today’s highly competitive e-commerce ecosystem, maximizing every edge counts when we’re aiming to maximize conversions and sales. Unfortunately, reducing abandoned carts often goes unaddressed by even the most keen and insightful shop owners using WooCommerce. This often comes down to a few simple reason: A lack of awareness about the issue, and a lack of good tools and plugins to appropriately address the WooCommerce abandoned cart.
Why even care with WooCommerce abandoned carts?
Customers who have already items to their cart are already well along their way in the buying cycle, showing intent to purchase. This places them at the cusp of committing to purchase, an important milestone. We’ve already attracted these potential customers to our shops, and focusing our efforts on these potential customers will yield unparalleled results.
ShopMagic has developed an abandoned cart add-on that integrates directly into WooCommerce, allowing shopkeepers to capitalize on an edge that is currently underutilized. Before we delve any further into ways we encourage customers with abandoned carts to complete their checkout, let’s get a better understanding of why it’s crucial.
Why abandoned cart emails are crucial
E-commerce operates in a cyclical fashion. As shopkeepers and entrepreneurs, the beginning of this cycle is marked by attracting potential leads to our site. Whether this is done by digital marketing or word of mouth, this places customers in a position of awareness that can ultimately lead to a sale.
Once customers have become aware of a product or service they’re attracted to, they start researching and comparing it to other similar offerings. This places them with an intent to purchase where so many potential sales get abandoned, and the cycle broken before completion. Retaining satisfied, returning customers may be our ultimate goal, but converting those nearing the purchasing step of the cycle is necessary to do so!
We’ve all done it at some point. Browsing sites of our favorite online shops and adding items to our cart, only to close out of the browser window without going to checkout. Based on an aggregate of 37 different studies, the Baymard Institute found the average online shopping cart abandonment rate to be 69.23%. This means for every shopper who added an item to their cart, 69.23% changed their mind and decided not to go through with their purchase.
Why are customers abandoning their carts?
Why are most potential customers (69.23%) not finishing their checkouts? The reason most commonly cited by online shoppers is probably one you’re very familiar with: “I was just browsing / not ready to buy yet”. Understandably, 58.6% of American online shoppers chose this as their main reason for abandoning their online shopping cart.
People add products to their cart for all sorts of reasons: second thoughts, not being ready to commit, finding better prices and/or reviews on competing products, among others. However, customers who have added an item(s) to their cart have already expressed intent to purchase. This often slips by unnoticed to shopkeepers, missing valuable leads for customers who have signaled intent by adding items to their cart. Follow-up emails that encourage customers to come back and finish their checkout are essential for maximizing sales and completing the most crucial step of the buying cycle.
Statista offers more insight into the phenomenon, with 25% of customers citing shipping costs as their primary reason for abandoning their cart. 22% of customers cited having to create a new user account as their primary reason, and 17% of customers saying they were conducting research for a future purchase.
Ignoring abandoned cart workflow is burning money
A broken buying cycle doesn’t have to be the end of the matter. Encouraging potential customers to voluntarily re-initiate the buying cycle is both profitable for shopkeepers and helpful to customers. Marketing Sherpa performed a study that revealed about half (51%) of all customers found abandoned cart emails helpful.
SaleCycle performed a study that revealed nearly half of all abandoned cart emails are opened (46.1%) and over a third of clicks lead to a purchase back on site (35.3%). Their study revealed that every abandoned cart email sent results in over $5 of revenue on average. The AOV (average order value) of purchases from abandoned cart emails was also found to be 19.1% higher than a typical purchase.
This is indicative of abandoned carts incurring revenue loss higher than what’s revealed by a cart’s contents at first glance. And that’s not even taking repeat sale potential into consideration! Neglecting to send reminder emails for abandoned carts is tantamount to lighting money on fire. As shopkeepers, we should be aiming to provide prospective customers accessibility and incentive to come back and complete their checkouts when they’re ready.
How should we tackle WooCommerce abandoned cart emails?
The best way for shop owners to tackle the dreaded WooCommerce abandoned cart is by setting up a proper abandoned cart workflow. Strategies we employ can be varying degrees of aggressive, but should utilize best practices that will result in the highest conversions. As the most optimal way to tackle this issue, setting up and automating WooCommerce abandoned cart workflow should be the highest priority.
The process begins with a customer visiting our shop, browsing inventory, and adding items to their cart. For some reason, they decide not to go through with their purchase and abandon their cart. SaleCycle did research that showed the optimal time to be within 20 minutes of abandonment (5.6%). In contrast, an abandoned cart email sent after 24 hours showed half the conversions (2.6%).
What does this mean for shopkeepers looking to automate their abandoned cart workflow? Real-time marketing in the form of abandoned cart emails is most efficient for our goals of optimizing revenue and converting potential customers to paying customers. We have the option of choosing to automate multiple e-mails or a single email, but the data shows automating at least one email to be sent within 20 minutes of abandonment is crucial.
Developing an abandoned cart workflow
So, what should shopkeepers be doing with regards to creating a workflow for a WooCommerce abandoned cart? The first step is recognizing the importance of setting up an automated abandoned cart email that sends within the first 20 minutes of an abandoned cart and taking action by setting up a workflow. Not only is it easy to do by using ShopMagic’s Abandon Cart Add-On, our software simplifies WooCommerce’s custom email scripting.
Deciding on the correct strategy for sending out cart abandonment emails can be difficult. There is a lot of advice and data out there we can sift through. This can make it confusing for shopkeepers looking to implement the most optimal strategy. It’s easy to overthink it, but as a general guideline: Just do it. We’ve already looked at data that shows an abandonment email being sent within 20 minutes is optimal for ensuring the maximum number of conversions. By implementing an automation for sending out our abandoned cart emails within 20 minutes of abandonment, we guarantee our shops the best possible chance of re initiating the buying cycle.
Implement first, and make changes to your strategy as you go. Start by writing a draft template for your shop’s abandoned cart email, and implement it into your WooCommerce shop by using ShopMagic’s Abandon Cart Add-On. Finding email templates for customers with abandoned carts is easy to do if you’re lost with regards to wording or need inspiration in creating a friendly, helpful email campaign. We’ve also simplified the process on our end.
Why you should use ShopMagic to automate your workflows
Our WooCommerce plugin offers unparalled versatility for your shop by handling powerful workflows for all of your abandoned cart emails, and more! A workflow can be set for all of your automated emails that will spring into action when triggered by configurable events within WooCommerce’s sale process. For example, your abandoned cart outreach email(s) will spring into action when triggered when a customer leaves their cart.
Email collection is extremely valuable for businesses looking to expand marketing reach. ShopMagic’s Abandon Cart Add-On collects customer emails before checkout ever occurs, so you can continue to build future lead generation opportunities. We’ve seamlessly integrated everything into MailChimp so you can continue to build your mailing lists without missing a beat. We believe creating future marketing opportunities by collecting customer emails is one of the most effective way of reaching an audience that has signaled interest. By approaching this in a way that is minimally intrusive, we can create a customer experience that is positive and reinforced by helpful marketing communication.
We also offer some great add-ons to further supplement and customize your workflows. Automated email campaigns can be set for customers based on status, purchasing frequency and spending, and specific products browsed or purchased. Our Delayed Emails Add-on allows for time-delayed emails that can be configured to thank customers for their purchases and encourage future sales. Working in conjunction with all of our other great features, our Request a Review Add-on automates personalized review outreach so you can collect helpful data that assists you and your customers.
Segmented customer lists can automatically be generated with the use of our powerful Customer Segments Add-On. By deciding upon actionable customer criteria such as spending, purchased products, and frequency of purchase, customer loyalty can be nurtured using targeted marketing campaigns. Furthermore, our After Purchase Upsell Add-On can override WooCommerce’s default redirect settings to redirect customers to specified upsell pages and maximize your high-margin sales.
To find out more about all the great things ShopMagic can do to optimize your workflow.
Common questions about abandoned cart workflows
Some common questions and concerns shopkeepers have regarding abandoned cart emails are
- Should I only target my efforts on registered customers, or should I target guests too?
- How aggressively should I be sending abandoned cart emails?
- Should I send only one email? Would two be perceived as spam?
Email collection has become a priority for e-commerce shopkeepers due to the unparalleled price to conversion ratio of email marketing. Email marketing is essentially free, and also offers versatility in re-initiating the buying cycle by offering news and promotions for products.
If we focus our abandoned cart emails solely on registered customers, we have the benefit of engaging customers who already have a purchase history or are interested enough to sign up. However, there is a good chance we’re missing a ton of value by ignoring guest customers. ShopMagic’s Abandon Cart Add-On is configured to request emails before cart abandonment ever happens.
Aggressive cart abandonment emails (more than one within a 60 day period) can be perceived as spam by customers, while not sending any results in missed value and visibility. Our approach is a good middle ground that provides value for potential customers (such as personalized coupons for abandoned carts) while providing us with valuable future lead opportunities even if we don’t close a sale.
Tying it all together
There’s no doubt that abandoned carts represent a potential for revenue reclaiming that simply cannot be ignored. Plugging this revenue leak should be a top priority for e-commerce shopkeepers looking to maximize their conversions. Abandoned cart emails are a low cost, high return automation that can be set quickly and personalized using ShopMagic Abandoned Carts add-on.
By being aware of and calculating our opportunity loss, we have both the ability and insight to tackle revenue loss resulting from our shop’s WooCommerce abandoned cart. By being aware of the buying cycle and taking efforts to ensure it doesn’t get broken before a purchase has been completed, we can focus on creating powerful workflows that will negate and reverse our opportunity loss as much as possible.
At Shopmagic, we aim to simplify workflows and get them working for you so you can shift your focus to other tasks that require undivided attention. We believe automation should be easy to setup, maintain, and modify. It should provide value for customers and shopkeepers alike, while seamlessly integrating into WooCommerce and Mailchimp. We do all of this and more. Don’t take our word for it, try it today!