Smart Cart Recovery Tips for BigCommerce Stores

Abandoned carts are one of the most common problems online sellers face, but they also offer a great opportunity to recover lost sales. By applying effective recovery tactics, BigCommerce store owners can remind hesitant buyers about their intended purchases and successfully re-engage them to complete transactions that might have been abandoned. Let’s explore actionable steps you can take to decrease cart abandonment and boost sales.

1. Know Why Carts are Abandonned

To create effective recovery strategies, you need to understand why customers abandon carts. They might leave due to unforeseen costs like shipping, a complicated checkout process, limited payment options, or simply because distractions interrupted their shopping. You can analyze web traffic analytics tools to identify your customers’ behaviors in order to determine how and where they are abandoning the cart.

2. Turn On BigCommerce’s Abandoned Cart Saver

BigCommerce has an abandon cart saver built in which automatically sends abandonment emails to shoppers that leave products in a memorable cart. Be sure to personalize your emails with customer names, abandon cart product images, and meaningful call to actions. In addition to reporting product images, employing discount codes and/or urgency messages to your abandoned cart emails can make a big difference in their recovery effectiveness.

3. Use time-limited discounts to push through to check out

Time-limited discounts create urgency with customers, inspiring them to complete their purchases. Experiment with offers of 10% off, free shipping, or extra gifts – but only trigger these offers after a period, or if a cart reaches a minimum threshold. This method can help you find the right balance of profitability and conversion increase.

4. Use a series of recovery emails

We don’t want to just send a single reminder email. Evidence suggests sending reminder emails multiple times (e.g. one hour after abandonment, 12 hours later, 24 hours later) is associated with continued conversion probabilities. Be friendly and helpful, and try out different subject lines, designs, and content, which can help increase the chances of engagement.

5. Use exit-intent popups to stop abandonment

Capture customers immediately before they leave your site with an exit-intent popup. If you use exit-intent popups and offer a discount, or a bonus to join your newsletter at that point (and at checkout if they join the newsletter), it may be enough to convince them to stay, and complete their purchase. Platforms like Privy and Justuno work well with BigCommerce, and can be set up quickly.

6. Streamline the Checkout Process for Simplicity and Trustworthiness

A complicated checkout process is one of the most common ways to get cart abandonment. Keep your checkout process as simple and straightforward as possible. Speed up the checkout process by reducing the amount of steps involved, offering guest checkout options, and auto-filling as much information as you’re able. Also use trust signals like security badges, clear return policies, and opportunities to contact your store to provide trust and authenticity to shoppers.

7. Provide Payment Choices

Having payment flexibility means added flexibility for shoppers and reduces friction in the buyer journey. If your BigCommerce store supports credit/debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and newer options, such as Buy Now Pay Later, or local payment gateways, all the better! The more choices you provide customers, the fewer barriers they will have at checkout.

8. Blaster Abandoned Shoppers with Ads

Retargeting ads level-up retail sales for customers who left your site without completing their purchase. Use retargeting ads on platforms like Facebook and Google to remind shoppers of the products they left behind. If you use dynamic retargeting ads to showcase the exact products customers left in their cart, and you’d also like to promote exclusive offers to bring the customer back, retargeting is the way to go. BigCommerce integrates well with these ad platforms and can be used by using an app or custom integration.

9. Utilize SMS Cart Recovery Campaigns for Higher Engagement

SMS messages have a higher open and response rate than emails, so if a customer has opted in, send cart reminders and discount offers directly to shoppers’ mobile devices when they are shopping. Providers like Postscript and Klaviyo offer automation tools for BigCommerce stores to create successful, effective SMS campaigns.

10. Measure, Test, and Improve Your Recovery

Cart recovery does not happen overnight, nor does it happen only once. It is a process that needs constant review and improvement. Take advantage of the analytics that BigCommerce and Google Analytics offers to track email open rates, click-throughs, and conversions. Test your messaging, timing, and offers with A/B testing, and see what works best for your business so that you can maximize your return on investment.
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