Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment Through Personalization

It is quite unfortunate that in today’s digital world, online businesses lose a major part of their revenue not because of poor product quality or marketing campaigns but due to cart abandonment. 

According to Forrester Research, digital shopping cart abandonment costs businesses an astounding $18 billion in lost sales income annually. This is also evident in a report by the Baymard Research Institute, which estimated that the average cart abandonment rate in 2023 was almost 70%. Isn’t it shocking?🤯

Though the above statistics are quite discouraging for businesses, let’s not lose hope! We are here to present this article that will help you learn about the best personalization strategies to reduce cart abandonment. 🙏

You will be glad to know that Segment stated that 56% of consumers say they will return to businesses if they have a positive personalized experience. Yay! Isn’t this amazing? ✌️

Well moving on, there are a variety of reasons why carts are usually abandoned, such as high shipping costs, out-of-date coupons, website performance problems, etc. But before we delve into these causes and their negative impacts, let’s first try to understand what shopping cart abandonment really is.

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment? 🧐

Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds items to his shopping cart on a website but then leaves the site before making a purchase. 🥺

Online customers may leave the website while looking through other products or while completing the checkout process. However, the outcome is the same in either case, which is lost sales by your online store. 📉

Now the question arises: How will businesses calculate their cart abandonment to overcome this problem? Online stores should simply divide the total number of completed purchases by the number of carts that were created. Then subtract this number from one and multiply by 100. Let’s assume that your online store completed 600 purchases last week, but online shoppers actually created 1,000 carts during that time. By using the above method, your shopping cart abandonment rate will turn out to be 40%. 

As we now know the definition and calculation of shopping cart abandonment, let’s look into the potential causes leading to this. ⤵

What Are The Causes of Shopping Cart Abandonment? 🤔

There are many causes behind shopping cart abandonment, but in this article, we will only be discussing the five most prevalent ones: 

▶ Unexpected costs

When an online shopper adds an item to his cart, he only has the price of that item in mind. However, at the time of checkout, he finds out there are sales taxes and high shipping costs as well. At this point, he gets discouraged and leaves the site before completing the purchase, thus leading to cart abandonment.

‍

▶ Complicated checkout processes

A complicated checkout process is also a reason to chase customers away. When this process becomes lengthy due to account creation, entering credit card information, or too many upselling or cross-selling offers, customers get frustrated and leave the site to buy from someone else. 

▶ Lack of trust

The lack of trust is usually related to payment security concerns when entering credit card information online. This is because we get to hear plenty of examples every day about breached customer financial information, which puts many shoppers on edge.

 ▶ Competitors offering better options 

Some shoppers at the time of checkout realize that competitors are selling better items at a better price, and their checkout process is also faster and easier. They might also find the competitor more trustworthy and reliable in terms of payment methods, delivery, and return policy. All these factors eventually lead to customers abandoning their carts and purchasing from someone else.

▶ Website performance problems

Website performance problems look unprofessional and are one of the major causes of cart abandonment. If a website takes too long to load each page, shoppers become frustrated and thus lose confidence in the checkout process. They also get reluctant to make a payment as they get worried about getting charged twice, so instead they abandon their cart and do not make a purchase.

What Are the Negative Impacts of Cart Abandonment?😱

Due to the above highlighted reasons and many more, online shoppers tend to abandon their carts without completing a purchase. This act leads to a loss in revenue! 💰

Let me explain this further by taking the example we mentioned above. Out of the 1,000 carts created per week, just 600 shoppers completed their purchase, which means a cart abandonment rate of 40%. If the average order value of each cart is $100, clearly you are earning $60,000 in revenue per week. However, you are losing out on $40,000 per week from abandoned carts. And this is definitely a big loss. 

Secondly, customers who abandon your carts never review your product or promote you on social media, thus as a business, you miss opportunities to build a community and a strong relationship with online shoppers. 

Are you now worried about whether your online business can overcome these negative impacts? Definitely, it can! 

Kudos to personalization strategies that will help you reduce shopping cart abandonment in the simplest ways! 👏 

Let’s find out how! 

Best Personalization Strategies to Reduce Cart Abandonment

In today’s tech-driven world, real-time personalization is the best way to make online shopping a wonderful experience. Certainly, it helps businesses develop strong reputations, attract more customers, and build brand loyalty. 

In this section, we will be highlighting the best personalization strategies that can be adapted by online or e-commerce stores to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Lets’s begin! 🔰

(1) Tailoring product recommendations

The online shopping experience can be personalized by making suitable product recommendations based on the user's past purchases and in-app activities. For this purpose, data analytics and machine learning algorithms can be used.

When a business offers personalized items to its potential customers without upselling and cross-selling excessively, customers do not get frustrated, and the chances of leaving the cart abandoned are also reduced. 

(2) Using email retargeting

This refers to reminding customers of abandoned carts through personalized emails or push notifications. Businesses can use personalized email messaging and creative ways to specify what the shopper is interested in and remind them that their cart is ready for checkout. As an additional incentive, they can include a promo code in their email nudge.

(3) Optimizing landing pages 

Every distinct landing page on your website should present the best first impression of your brand, regardless of the volume of visitors. This implies that businesses should create personalized landing pages based on the user's surfing history, location, and time of day. All this enhances the customer experience, thus convincing the customer to purchase from you.

(4) Using real-time social proof 

Real-time social proof refers to product reviews or testimonials provided by old customers who had a great experience. Businesses can feature these customer reviews and star ratings on their main product pages, as well as display real-time purchases being made. 

This personalization strategy can instill trust and confidence in potential buyers with similar preferences or demographics, thus increasing the likelihood of customers following through with their purchases.

(5) Offering personalized live chat support 

In order to reduce cart abandonment during the checkout process, online stores can provide individualized live chat support to their visitors. If the questions and concerns of shoppers are addressed in real time, they are more likely to make a purchase there and then. And for this purpose, customer support representatives are trained by businesses to provide personalized assistance to their customers in the best possible way.

(6) Implementing exit-intent pop-ups

Exit intent pop-ups refer to pop-ups that are used to attract customers who are about to leave your website. These popups include incentives such as limited-time offers, discount codes, or free shipping for customers who are leaving the cart abandoned. These personalization tactics help customers reconsider their decision and complete the purchase by recovering the abandoned cart.

(7) Retargeting ads

Retargeting campaigns follow website visitors who have left without making a purchase by using cookies and tracking pixels to display customized advertising on the visited platforms. By continuously reminding customers with relevant ads, businesses can convince potential customers to make a purchase and reduce the average cart abandonment rate. 

(8) Personalizing the mobile experience 

Personalizing the mobile experience is crucial, as in today’s world, shoppers prefer to use mobile phones instead of computers for placing an order. Due to this, businesses should personalize consumer’s mobile experiences by tailoring the interface and content to fit smaller screens. Moreover, they should make sure that their website or app is mobile-friendly, with a responsive design, easy navigation, and simplified checkout processes.

(9) Analyzing data using A/B testing

Due to the usage of various personalization strategies, it is important for businesses to analyze and decide which one works best under different scenarios. For this purpose, A/B testing, also known as split testing, is used to show multiple variations of a campaign or a webpage to different visitors. In this way, businesses finalize the version that worked the best and was most popular.  

These A/B tests also help to determine which offers, headlines, colors, and calls-to-action buttons (CTAs) lead to the best conversion rates.

Wrapping up

Reducing cart abandonment is one of the ultimate goals of online businesses, which can be achieved with the help of personalization. This in turn, not only boosts sales and improves conversion rates but also builds a strong relationship with online shoppers. 

However, businesses should combine above discussed personalization strategies with trust-building elements, transparent pricing, clear shipping information, and excellent customer support to achieve this milestone.

Explore Relevic as the best website personalization tool to design web campaigns that increase conversion rates and foster customer loyalty!

‍