How to Use Exit Intent Popup to Increase Online Sales

Exit Intent Popup – the very must-have elements every online store should have…

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you are running an online store and trying to increase the conversion rate of your store. Your marketing efforts are to get new customers, attract more visitors and drive them to the end of your conversion funnel.

However, the ugly truth is that 68% of your visitors leave your store right before the checkout page. Despite this disheartening statistics, you can definitely turn more of your traffic into real sales with Exit Intent – one of the most powerful technologies for today’s e-Commerce. 

Exit Intent technology can be applied in different channels to support online stores to retain customers, such as exit intent popup windows, header bar, or automated emails. In this post, we would like to focus on exit intent popup – the most popular forms used in most eCommerce websites today.

Before we show you best practices to use exit popup to prevent cart abandonment, let’s together explore what exit intent technology exactly is and how it works to save your conversion.

What is Exit Intent technology?

Let’s say, a visitor has made it to your site and is browsing through your products or even added some to cart, but for some reasons he decides to leave and not buy anything. Basically, Exit Intent technology aims to:

• detect when the customer is about to leave,
• briefly interrupt his Intention to exit with an attractive popup window and guide him towards a strong call-to-action such as “Get Discount” or “Subscribe”.

It works based on an advanced predictive algorithm, which detects visitors’ activity, through mouse movements and velocity, and hook them back to your store in time.

How does Exit Intent technology help to increase conversion rate?

Even though this technology might seem new to you, at the end of the day, the mission of Exit Intent is to increase the conversion rate of your store, and here are some of the ways in which it offers you a helping hand:

#1 Save you a second chance to sell

It is very important that you show your visitors a definite selling message such as discount or free shipping to convince them to view and buy your products. If this attempt does not catch their attention at first, they will leave and you have no chance of selling. You need to repeat your message, or give something more attractive to hook them back and guarantee a successful purchase.

Exit Intent acts as a “safety net”: an popup window will remind customers of your offer, or offer them a bigger discount. Now that you have their attention back, they will continue exploring the site and might buy something as they have the incentive to. With only a simple exit popup, you have a second chance to bring this customer one step further along the conversion funnel.

#2 Build an email subscription list

If you are selling online and have not had an email list of potential customers, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. A strong list of customers who are interested enough to give you their emails is the most important asset to your business, as from this list, you can develop cost-effective and customized email automation strategies.

So, why not kill two birds with one stone, by running an exit intent popup on your store which asks customers to leave their email so they can receive updates of your amazing offers, like this:

You will get them back at your site, and turn one more visitor into potential paying customer. Now, you can move on to sending emails that are tailored to their preference and chances are they will buy your products.

#3 Reduce cart abandonment rate

There can be a lot of reasons why visitors add your products to cart then stop and leave, but you would want to step in before they abandon cart and lead them to successfully checkout.

Exit Intent technology is one of the most effective ways to kill Cart Abandonment – the frustrating but common practice of every online store visitors, simply because it gives them the incentive to complete checkout process. It detects when your customers are about to leave cart, and popup a window of discount, free gifts, or free shipping. With just a simple but smart exit popup window, you are increasing your conversion rate and of course your revenue.

#4 Recommending other products

If customers do not find the product they are looking for, they will very much likely to leave your site. So if you have that product, why not help them find it, and help yourself increase online sales with a simple exit intent popup window? Right when they are about to leave, offer them to have a look at your best-seller or a new product within the category. Redirect them to other products with a simple message such as “If this is not what you’re looking for, how about this?” and make sure they find the things they need. Before you know it, you are going to convert more traffic into paying customers than you imagine.

2 Ways to use exit popups on e-Commerce stores

The first and most simple way to start implementing exit intent technology on your store is offering about-to-leave visitors discount coupons to stop their intention of leaving the site. Better Coupon Box‘s smart, beautifully designed coupon popup is in hand:

The popup will automatically show up when customers are detected to be leaving the store, interrupting their intention of exiting and motivate them to stay longer, explore the store’s products and finally checking out with last-minute discount coupons offer “just for them”.

Another smart way of using exit popups is to offer last-minute coupon right in cart page, where you can more quickly close the deal with customers who are interested but still hesitant because of the price. The example deal below is powered by Checkout Boost plugin:

The popup above appears in cart page when customers are detected to have intention of leaving the site in cart page. By asking customers to do a simple action of sharing carts to their social media in exchange for a discount code, this exit offer smartly encourages customers to continue to checkout page and finish their order.

Conclusion

Now that you have known how exit intent technology is powerful in e-Commerce, you probably should start implementing exit intent popup on your store right now to increase conversion rate. Share with fellows here your results and give some feedback on how to optimize your exit intent offers to make them really work in selling online.