Do you have a business selling products? We're sure you've experienced chatting up potential buyers who seem interested, only for them to disappear and not buy anything. Offline, it's the promise that they'll come back later; online, it's ghosting your Messenger chat, or browsing off your site even though they have items in your shopping cart.
Cart abandonment is real. In fact, more than 70% of your shoppers will probably wander off before finishing their order with you. The good news is that there are ways to deal with it so that you can recover the lost sale.
What is Cart Abandonment?
Cart abandonment is when online shoppers put items into their online shopping cart, but leave the website without buying.
While it's rare to see filled but abandoned shopping carts in real life, it's common when it comes to online stores. It's easy to add items to an online shopping cart, but also very easy to browse away from the online shop with the cart in question.
Abandoned carts are a reality in e-commerce.
As a business owner, you should keep an eye on how many customers are abandoning their shopping carts and leaving their orders unfinished, as well as how many you are able to recover.
Recovering these abandoned carts should be a priority for any business.
Top Reasons Why Buyers Abandon Shopping Carts
The first step to solving any problem is always understanding why it happens in the first place. There are many reasons why your shoppers might be leaving their cart, but most of them will fall under these reasons:
- Shoppers aren't prepared for the shipping cost and decide that their total order is too costly after shipping.
- They need their order urgently, but the available shipping options are too slow.
- The checkout process is too lengthy or complicated for them.
- They are only window-shopping, with no plans to buy yet.
Naturally, the best way to tackle abandoned carts is through fixing the problem at the source.
If your customers are leaving because your website is hard to navigate, look into making it simpler. Using a third party online shop manager or chatbot with a standard checkout process like Chatbuddy might help avoid these pitfalls, but don't assume. Investigate why your customers are leaving and see if you can fix these issues.
Unfortunately, that won't cover all the reasons customers might leave without paying for their order. In that case, all is not lost. There are still ways to recover some of these abandoned carts.
Ways of Recovering Abandoned Carts
There are traditional ways to get back the lost sale, including sending a reminder email to the customer a short time after theyr have left your website without completing their order. These can all be effective means--but sometimes people don't check emails and they go unread.
Chatbots are great at helping you cover that extra ground.
They can be set up to send a timed message to your potential customer after they've abandoned the chat for an hour. If you have a website where people purchase from you, they can also send a popup message when your shopper tries to leave your website.
Are your shoppers leaving due to high shipping costs? While it's better to provide the lowest possible shipping prices, you have more options if you have a chatbot. You can look into maintaining a certain level for shipping, but offering a shipping discount when buyers leave without completing their order.
If your customers are just browsing, maybe they're looking for the best value for their money and they haven't decided yet. Being able to engage directly with them via chat can help you close that sale, or at least find out more about your customer and what they need.
Being able to directly engage with your shoppers through conversation can be a game changer for your business, so don't hesitate to find out more about them and how you can help them.