Hi!
This morning brought about another quick carcast, followed by some very valuable advice for all e-commerce operators.
Press play and find out!
To implement shopping cart recovery, you can use commercial services such as SeeWhy.com.
But here’s how you can build a free alternative – a fully functional shopping cart recovery setup.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- A persistent shopping cart (so you can save the cart contents for further processing)
- Capture email FIRST in your store (otherwise, you cannot follow up with offers)
- Track cart abandonment – this may take some detective work but it’s always possible!
- Add to email sequence of three (one hour later – one day later – three days later).
- Unsubscribe from Recovery List once they bought the cart contents
So WHY a specific email list with three followup messages?
Because you’ll want to help people in the following situations:
- One HOUR later: Those who just forgot to follow through or got distracted by something else (NOT uncommon 😉 )
- One DAY later: Those who ran out of time or something came up while shopping
- THREE days later: Those who “needed time to think it through”
Right? Makes sense?
Go do it – your bottom line depends on it! Â
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsOne of the most powerful and profitable products any e-commerce site can utilize is the cart abandonment email. Most websites will have 95%+ of their checkout traffic bounce before they complete their purchase, why not remarket to them? What we’ve found most useful with this series, is making sure your site’s checkout page cookies last 2 weeks or so. When the email recipient clicks on the email, you can direct them back to their cart with the products already populated. Great stuff!
Thanks for the comments, Trevor! And you’re right, it all starts with that persistent cookie. Do you prefer some ready-made solution to achieve this?
I didn’t knew that following these steps would turn so well, Actually to be frank I followed all the above things and I hoping I would get more sales sooner. Loved your video too, and the problem was I was not capturing the email list now have started.
Thanks for sucha good piece of info.
30% is a big promise but i guess you never know if it works if you don’t make the changes.
Markus: 30% is actually not that big. It seems like a big difference because we routinely lose so much sales we’re not even aware of on any rational level.
If you create a system to bring people back, it could be even higher. And I’m not counting in the compound sales generated, just the recovered ones. Just so few companies take the trouble to… well, go through the trouble. 🙂
How else can we acquire the email list without the initial registration to your site?
James: Even without registration you can ask for their email for different purposes, incentivize them for offers and more. A larger topic perhaps… Good question though.
what i did with my store that i replaced my complicated cart check out system with one step checkout. i started sending news letter to my existing clients and i have also managed to buy a ticket system clients can order jewelry and can even replace them on personal request. i am also working on cart abandonment other issues like email system.
I like very much the idea with abandonment cart combined with a system of discount coupons in this way you can know about what customers want if they are registered users of course on your website.
Yes, most of the time people are either sold on first sight or need more convincing by thinking it through on their own which is why its so important to let people figure out why they need something on their own so they’ll be more inclined to be happy about their decision. If it is them then you’ll have a long term customer!
Everett – you got it, people are just not always in that position to buy even if they were interested. It’s worth just bringing them back to it for a second consideration..