Despite being popular for over two decades already, eCommerce is still very much an evolving market. In the age of Covid-19, when many people are avoiding brick and mortar retail shopping whenever possible, online retailers are poised to experience an unprecedented increase in traffic.
So, how do you turn that traffic into sales? Even in this day and age, where online commerce is more popular than ever, many consumers abandon their shopping cart before ever making a purchase. If an online retailer wants to get ahead of the curve when it comes to converting abandoned carts into sales, follow up is key. Here are the main reasons it helps to follow up with abandoned cart users:
Find Out Why Your Customer Abandoned Their Cart
It may sound obvious, but in order to figure out how to convert your site’s abandoned shopping cart users into sales, you need to determine your customers’ reasons for not buying in the first place. Once you know the reasons you’re losing out on sales in the first place, it becomes easier to fix the problem.
Converting Abandoned Carts into Sales is an Easy Fix…Usually
Most of the time, the reasons that customers abandon their carts fall into a few different categories:
· No free shipping offered
· Outdated website prompts security concerns
· Complicated checkout procedures
· No coupons available
These are all fairly simple problems for an online retailer to fix, and abandoned cart SMS messaging can draw your customers back in and help convert those abandoned carts to repeat customers.
Abandoned Cart SMS Messaging Creates Brand Loyalty
Abandoned cart SMS messaging is such an important tool for online retailers. There is something that feels very personal about a text message, and when you follow up with a customer via text, it makes your customer feel as though you appreciate their business. Giving your customers a voice and then offering a solution to their perceived problem will go a long way towards ensuring that your customer feels valued, and a valued customer means brand loyalty.
Easily Offer a Customized Solution to Your Customer
Following up with an abandoned cart user via abandoned cart SMS messaging will allow the online retailer, in most cases to offer an easy solution to the customer’s problem, resulting in that abandoned cart becoming a sale. Using our examples above, let’s outline some quick and easy solutions that can be communicated via text to the customer objections:
· No free shipping offered – offer a free shipping code via return text (if you’re worried that free shipping will cut into your profits, increase base prices slightly to offset the cost. Most people won’t even notice they’re paying slightly more when they get something (i.e. shipping), for free.
· Outdated website prompts security concerns – the most obvious way to fix this problem is to not have an outdated website in the first place. These days, it’s all about first impressions. But providing a link to real customer testimonials and reviews will go a long way to convincing a new customer that your site is legit and should be trusted.
· Complicated checkout procedures – provide a direct link to checkout, and offer guest checkout so that the amount of information a customer is required to provide is reduced. Encourage the customer to create a profile during their next visit by offering a 10% discount on their next order for doing so.
· No coupons available – offer a 5% or 10% coupon via text, depending on the price of the item. Again, a 5% or 10% discount won’t cut into your bottom line as much as that poor cart sitting abandoned!
In the age of digital marketing, and especially with the popularity of SMS messaging, there’s really no reason you can’t increase your abandoned shopping cart conversion rate. All it takes is a bit of a personal touch and an abandoned cart can turn into a customer for life.